Provide facilities for newly created assemblies – Ofosu Ampofo

Mr Samuel Ofosu Ampofo, Minister for Local Government and Rural Development, has appealed to traditional authorities and opinion leaders to provide the necessary facilities to ensure the smooth take off of the 41 newly created assemblies.

He said the provision of the facilities had become imperative because his Ministry would soon come out with a roadmap for the inauguration of those assemblies.

Mr Ofosu Ampofo, who was speaking at the first ordinary meeting of the second session of the sixth assembly of the Tema Metropolitan Assembly (TMA) in Tema, said the government had released one million Ghana cedis to each of the new assemblies to facilitate their smooth take-off.

He said street lighting facilities worth Gh¢460,000 had been made available to the TMA to improve security, and appealed to the assembly to rehabilitate the Tema Youth Centre, for conversion into an ICT Centre of Excellence for the benefit of residents of the metropolis.

Mr Ofosu Ampofo commended the TMA for increasing its internally generated revenue by the end of the 2011 financial year by 44.32 percent describing it as an unprecedented feat in the history of the assembly.

Mr Robert Kempes Papa Nii Ofosu Ware, Metropolitan Chief Executive, said the total figure for 2011 stood at Gh¢16,958,685.92 which represented 115.8 percent over the actual collection for 2010 which was Gh¢14,736,187.62.

He spoke about building memorial parks in honour of late President Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah for his role in the establishment of Tema and said the first phase of the project, which had already taken off in earnest, consists of his statue with dancers around him with a fountain water and a billboard.

The second phase would involve the construction of a fence wall, summer huts, rest rooms, a library and landscaping of the grounds.**