Bibiani DCE ignorant of own district's population

Members of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) on Monday April 18, were left amazed when the District Chief Executive (DCE) for Bibiani-Anwhiaso-Bekwai, Jacob Ware, could not tell the population of his district.

The DCE appeared before the committee to answer to some financial infractions uncovered against the district by the Auditor-General.

Mr Ware, however, told Class News in a later interview that he was aware of the voter population of the district and not the general population.

“I know it is about 130,000, but there was no opportunity for me to do the correction; I would have done that. The voter population is about 70,000; that was a very sad mistake I made by stating that the population is 70,000. It could not have been 70,000 because even when we vote, we get about 64,000, so, what about the rest. So, I was looking at the voter population. What pricked my mind first was the voter population, it is not as if I don’t know the numbers, I know the numbers. The population size is about 130,000. As humans we all make mistakes,” he stated.

But a member of the Committee, Isaac Asiamah, expressed disappointment in the DCE’s lack of knowledge of his district.

He told Class News’ parliamentary correspondent, Ekow Annan, that such mistakes were unpardonable and would only be eliminated if DCEs were vetted by parliament to test their knowledge of issues.

“If you have people, who are leading in these areas, they are supposed to be political leaders and they appear before committees like this and they exhibit complete ignorance of issues. It is not the best for our democracy” he stated.

“It baffles me the DCE could not tell this committee how many people he is leading and how many people are in his jurisdiction. So, if you do not know the total number of people in your district, how can you plan?” he asked

“…This is not about the DCE, who came today; it is about such people out there whose knowledge of issues are not the best, but are managing big time resources. District, municipal and metropolitan [chief executives], we should vet all of them going forward. Let us change the constitution, so that those people are all vetted publicly.”