Stimulate economic activities to enhance revenue — Samuel Sarpong
District co-ordinating directors have been urged to employ effective ways of stimulating economic activities in their districts to enhance revenue mobilisation for the provision of infrastructure and social services.
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The Central Regional Minister, Mr Samuel Sarpong, stated this at a day’s sensitisation workshop held for chief directors and district co-ordinating directors from Central, Greater Accra and Western regions on the implementation status of the administrative decentralisation policy of the government by the Local Government Secretariat at the Coconut Groove Hotel in Elmina.
Mr Sarpong indicated that that was the surest way to reduce dependency on the District Assemblies’ Common Fund for local development and service delivery.
“I will, therefore, urge you all to effectively play your roles as heads of institutions to help manage the scarce financial resources to ensure high financial efficiency and value for money in our project implementation,” he added.
Touching on the need of the workshop, Mr Sarpong said the workshop would provide senior public servants at the regional and district levels with the opportunity to learn about the local government service and also create the platform for the district directors to exchange and share experiences on critical local governance, human resource management and development issues for effective management of regions and districts.
“Let me urge you all to be open and share the best practices to help the Local Government Service formulate good programmes for our human resource development, enhance productivity and service delivery,” Mr Sarpong stated, and expressed worry about the issue of ineffective and inefficient implementation of government policies and programmes at the local level.
“This development has undermined the effort of the government to reduce poverty and deprivation,” he noted.
The minister pledged the Regional Co-ordinating Council’s would provide the needed technical support for effective and efficient implementation of the District Medium-term Development Plans.
Speaking at the workshop, the Head of Local Government Service Secretariat, Dr Callistus Mahama, admonished the districts and co-ordinating directors to guide their metropolitan, municipal and districts assemblies’ executives in their decision making.
Dr Mahama expressed concern about the poor supervision of government’s projects by the directors in their various districts and cautioned them to desist from such practices.
“Do not go back and be the same. This time, we are going to be on you,” Dr Mahama cautioned.
A representative from the National Road Safety Commission (NRSC), Mr David Asafo Adonteng, who spoke at the workshop, advised the directors on the need to add road safety measures to all the speeches of their chief executives, indicating that it would help curb the alarming rate of road fatalities in the metropolitan/municipal and district assemblies (MMDAs).
Mr Adonteng also talked about improper ways of mounting billboards by the roadsides which tend to block the view of drivers, thus contributing to accidents on our roads.
He also urged all the participants to ensure that billboards in their MMDAs were put at the right places.
By Zadok Kwame Gyesi/Daily Graphic/Ghana