President to inaugurate new assemblies in June

President John Evans Atta Mills, will inaugurate the 46 newly created district and municipal assemblies on June 19, 2012; Mr Samuel Ofosu Ampofo, the Local Government and Rural Development (MLGRD) Minister, has announced.

Those assemblies had already been gazetted and their Legislative Instruments (LIs) published for smooth take off.

The Minister said a GH¢42 million budget had also been set aside to provide the needed administrative infrastructure.

Mr Ofosu Ampofo was speaking at a meeting with the National House of Chiefs in Kumasi on Thursday.

This was to update the chiefs on trends and happenings in the local government sector.

The Minister said as part of efforts to improve the human resource base of the assemblies, 30,000 employees of the civil service had been transferred to the local government service.

Frantic effort was being made to recruit personnel with the requisite skills and expertise to fill vacant positions at the district level.

Mr Ofosu Ampofo, spoke of a number of initiatives being implemented to bring development to the people including the Functional Organization Assessment Tool and District Development Facility, the Urban Poverty Reduction Project, the Urban Environmental Sanitation Project Two, Local Government Capacity Support Project, the Ghana Social Opportunities Project, Local Enterprises and Skills Development Project and the redesigned Ghana School Feeding Programme as well as the Gender, Youth and Women Empowerment Programme.

He said redesigning and expansion of the School Feeding Programme was aimed at correcting unfairness of the previous arrangement and targeted to cover 1,040,000 pupils.

The Minister appealed to traditional rulers to assist the assemblies to identify and implement meaningful development programmes and projects, to better the lives of the people in their communities.

Wulugu Naba, Pugansoa Naa Professor John S. Nabila, President of the House of chiefs, said the mobilization of both human and material resources for wealth creation and improvement of the quality of life of the people was dear to the hearts of the chiefs.

He pledged the unflinching support and readiness of the chiefs to work with the assemblies.**