Disbursement of Zongo dev’t fund to be based on community needs - Minister

Minister for Inner City and Zongo Development, Alhaji Abubakar Saddique Boniface, has said “needs assessment” is next on his agenda as far as distribution of resources to the earmarked Zongo communities is concerned.

According to the minister, he has already visited nine regions, save Greater Accra, to engage stakeholders.

“After this, I am supposed to send a group of consultants and technical men, to go and do needs assessment. What I have done is stakeholder consultation. The other group that will be moving is to do proper base line assessment and needs assessment so that for every community, we know the exact needs of the community; some will be water, drains, alley ways, streets, roads, schools, clinics and others.

All those things will be based on the assessment that will be made by the technical people and consultants. So, it is not like a bullet kind of thing, where we will do a shovel type of work; we will be sending development based on your needs,” he told the B&FT in Parliament.

The Zongo and Inner-City Development Fund Bill, 2017, has been laid in Parliament for its first reading and has been duly referred to the Committees of Local Government and Rural Development and Finance.

“Development in the country has been discriminatory; so, the president wants a situation where development, today, will have to be integrated. So, the fund is to help give us resources and enough funds to be able to tackle the deficiencies in the Zongo communities,” the minister said.

He also added that the needs assessment was critical as it will help them to deliver appropriate solutions and to also prevent duplication of resources to these communities.

“We would not go and provide toilet when the people need water. We have to provide what they need so they would be the guards of the particular projects we will be provided; so, that at the end of the day, everybody will see the value of what we have provided for them.”

Government has reportedly allocated Gh?219.5m to the ministry to work and build good secular schools for the overall advancement of that faction of society.

The fund, when approved by parliament, would enable the ministry kick start projects by September.