Upper East Regional National Democratic Congress (NDC) Communication Team Member, Solomon TTB lashed out at the Minister for Local Government, Decentralization and Rural Development, Dan Botwe for charging MMDAs to deploy strategies that can help boost local economies and improve governance in the municipalities, towns and villages across the country.
Speaking on A1 Radio’s Day Break Upper East Show, the NDC Talensi Constituency Secretary, said Mr Dan Botwe and the NPP government have failed as far as the local governance structure is concerned.
He said, “in 2017, the NPP passed a certain law or an act (Act 947) which was called the Earmarked Funds Capping and Realignment Act, and they sought to reduce the five percent (5%) allocations that are supposed to be made to district assemblies. They capped it and they benefited from it. They were not giving the required amount to the districts. How will they develop?” he quizzed.
Solom TTB claimed that in the whole of 2021, no pesewa of the DACF was released to the various district assemblies.
“I am telling you that, do your fact-checking right, just last month I had a conversation with some of them and they admitted they have only cleared 2020 last two quarters. The whole of 2021 first quarter, second quarter up to the last quarter, they have not paid a single pesewa,” he added.
In his opinion, the current government has failed to strengthen the local government system.
But a communication team member of the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP), Samuel Akonga disagreed. According to Mr Akonga, the various MMDAs are seeing significant development.
“If you tell us that we have capped the local assembly common fund and because of that development is not going, infrastructure is not going, I beg to differ. We have infrastructure facilities springing up in some of the districts that we have, almost all the districts we have in this region.”
“But I have always wanted you to know that the fact that we have capped the district assembly common fund does not mean that development is not going,” he added.
He however believed that the local assembly system needs to be restructured so that certain units within the assembly would stand alone without any interference.
These units according to him can receive funding directly from the central government for their planned activities.
Source: A1radioonline.com|101.1MHz|Osuman Kaapore Tahiru|Ghana
