It has come to light that some residents within the Bolgatanga Municipality of the Upper East Region are illegally subletting stores owned by the Assembly and charging exorbitant amounts for same.
Rex Asanga, the MCE for the Bolgatanga Municipality explained that while reviewing the rent arrangement with some shop renters, the Assembly found that some of the original renters had illegally subletted the stores and were charging more than 100 percent of what they paid to the Assembly.
” … people who have not paid for the shops, we have to reallocate them. People who have subletted the shops to others, we should allocate it to those who are there working. People take the shop from the Assembly at Ghc60 and give it to others at Ghc200 a month. There are some [shops] that have been given out for Ghc250, Ghc300.”
“And yet we cannot collect the Ghc60 that is owed us? Isn’t it ridiculous? People are subletting the shops and they do not even pay us because we went to sleep. We said Rent Control and they also went to sleep,” he said.
Speaking on the Day Break Upper East Show, the MCE explained that the situation cannot continue to happen.
“This is a new era. People are now running to pay. They’ve paid up. Because we were reviewing the whole thing, people paid only up to 2021 and leave 2022 for us to decide whether we want them to use the shops or not.”
“The blame comes to us first and foremost,” he added.
Mr. Asanga explained that the Assembly would continue to work to improve revenue collection in the Municipality to supplement the DACF and other Statutory Funds.
Source: A1radioonline.com|101.1MHz|Mark Kwasi Ahumah Smith|Ghana
