Assemblies to get more money for development

Sunyani (Western Region) 12 May ?99

The public accounts committee of parliament is to propose for an upwards review of the current five per cent of the overall national revenue which is set aside as common fund for disbursement to district assemblies for projects.

Mr J.H. Mensah, the chairman of the committee and minority leader, announced this at the second ordinary meeting of the Sunyani district assembly at Sunyani on Tuesday.

There has been a tremendous improvement in the application of the common fund by the district assemblies in recent years and the upward review of the funds would ensure increases in the number of development projects nation-wide.

Mr Mensah also announced that measures have been adopted to streamline the operations of the district assemblies and said apart from the normal auditing of their accounts, unannounced auditing of some selected assemblies would be undertaken.

He praised the government for reconstructing and rehabilitating a number of roads in the country and mentioned in particular the Wa-Bole road.

Mr Mensah, however, called for immediate reconstruction of the Sunyani-Atronie-Kenyasi road to facilitate the integration of the Brong and the Ahafo sections of the region.

The district chief executive, Mr Kwadwo Nyamekye-Marfo said the assembly collected 2.033 billion cedis as revenue last year as against estimated revenue of 2.3 billion cedis.

For the same period, the assembly spent 1.9 billion cedis thus registering a surplus of 74 million cedis.