Assembly members urged to improve lives of people
The Ada West District Assembly in the Greater Accra Region, has held the first ordinary meeting of the fourth session of the district assembly at Sege, the district capital, with a call on the assembly members to help improve the living standards of the people.
The District Chief Executive (DCE), Mr Adzoteye Lawer Akrofi, who addressed the meeting, said government took cognisance of challenges assembly members faced in the discharge of their duties and was collaborating with the assemblies to ease their plight.
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He said the members of the Ada West District Assembly were among one of the first to have received an allocation of motorbikes which was helping them to discharge their duties in their various electoral areas.
He said while the assembly lacked critical human resources for the execution of its programmes, it had also been faced with high attrition rate of staff, especially at the top management level.
He said in 2018, 17 key staff members, including the coordinating director and other heads of departments, were transferred and that had affected the district.
‘’We were not spared this year as the assembly has already seen changes in key positions in the District Coordinating Director and Finance Officer.
I am not particularly enthused about the frequent re-posting of District Coordinating Directors as this has been affecting implementation of strategic and critical decisions emanating from the assembly and the central government,’’ Mr Akrofi added.
Revenue mobilisation
He said the total revenue projected by the assembly was GH¢7,112,529.26 as the annual composite budgetary estimates for 2019, out of which GH¢2,887,708.15 was collected as of May, 2019 representing 40.6 per cent.
He said the assembly adopted aggressive revenue mobilisation strategies at the beginning of the year and that saw great improvement in the internally generated fund of the assembly.
He said one of the strategies was the direct payment of building permit fees into the assembly’s account for issuance of official receipt.
The DCE pointed out that an amount of GH¢449,379.74 was realised out of the GH¢685,000 targeted, representing 65.6 per cent as of May, 2019 whereas GH¢587,112.10 out of GH¢616,000 representing 95.31 per cent was attained for 2018.
The management of the assembly, he said, was determined to continue to intensify its community engagements, development of controlled activities during weekends and night patrols in order to surpass the internally generated fund for the district for the year.
Mr Akrofi opined that even though the Ada West District was endowed with substantial resource potential to support development of the district, those resources were largely untapped.
He said currently, the assembly mostly depended on salt for its revenue generation and stressed the need for the assembly to consider other sources seriously.
Rural electrification
The DCE noted that rural electrification was very critical for the empowerment of cottage industries to help the people in the district and, therefore, there was the need to continue to promote that to ensure that every community was hooked to the national grid.
The Presiding Member of the Assembly, Mr David Narh Amuyao, asked the assembly members to live up to the task so that together, they could develop the district in all areas. He also congratulated the assembly for passing the District Performance Assembly Tool (DPAT).