Mpohor-Wassa East exceeds revenue target.

Daboase (W/R), June 18, -GNA- The Mpohor-Wassa East district assembly exceeded its internally generated revenue target of 848 million cedis by more than 56 million cedis during the 2004 fiscal year.

The Assembly received about 7.7 billion cedis as grants, investment and other miscellaneous revenue sources instead of the 6.6 billion cedis budgeted for the period under review. Mr. Edward Tawiah Amprofi, the District Chief Executive (DCE) said the relatively high performance in the revenue sector was due to injection of efficient policies and hard work of revenue officers.

Addressing the first ordinary meeting of the third session of the assembly at Daboase on Thursday, the DCE said the Assembly has evolved strategies to further enhance revenue generated internally for accelerated and sustained development. For instance, the Assembly has introduced conveyance fee to be paid by tanker drivers who ply roads in the area to lift palm oil from the mills of the Benso Oil Palm Plantation (BOPP) to companies in Accra, Tema and other parts of the country.

Mr. Amprofi said even though the conveyance levy had been part of the byelaws of the Assembly for the past 12 years its implementation had not been enforced and said check points would be mounted to for the collection of the levy. He urged members of the assembly to continue to work and hard and brace themselves up for more efficient action on the revenue front to avoid over reliance on the common fund from the Government. The Assembly's Revenue Mobilization Taskforce and the Statutory Planning Committee are being encouraged to organise more revenue education programmes as a means to ensure that the people meet their tax obligations to the Assembly.

Mr. Amprofi announced the establishment of a debt recovery secretariat that would be responsible for the recovery of outstanding loans totalling about nine million cedis granted to groups and individuals under the poverty alleviation fund. Plans are far advanced for the Assembly to form a joint venture with the Subri Industrial Paper Limited under which 600 million cedis would be sank into the production of 50,000 oil palm seedlings for supply to interested farmers who would be expected to pay the cost after five years.

Mr. Amprofi said the venture would help to reduce poverty as well as create employment for the youth. The Assembly spent a chunk of its revenue to provide health, education, road, water and sanitation and human resource development to enhance accelerated growth.

Mr. Samuel Effah, Presiding Member of the Assembly reminded members of their duty to educate the people to keep the environment clean to reduce the incidents of malaria that continue to have a toll on the social and economic lives of the people. "We, as the representatives of the people should educate them on the need to keep their environments clean and also entreat religious leaders to join the crusade since cleanliness is next to Godliness", he said.