Sunyani West District Assembly is not broke

Odumase (B/A), Oct. 26, GNA - The Sunyani West District Assembly is functionally vibrant with sound and open financial administration, Mr. John Kofi Adomako, the District Coordinating Director has said. He said the assembly had no loopholes for any unjustified expenditure and is being financially judicious by expending every amount on merit with diligence and transparent accounting records.

Mr Adomako was reacting to a publication that said "Sunyani West Assembly Is Broke." He said "the district does not even have official residence for the District Chief Executive and should have rented a place at Odumase for him but he is living in his private residence at Nsoatre with no cost to the assembly".

Mr Adomako said without official residence, the assembly should have hired at least a three-bedroom house and coupled with protocol expenditure and official security for the Chief Executive the assembly would have spent about GHC 500 monthly for those purposes but "he is not taking anything", he added.

He said it was part of the assembly's recurrent expenditure to fuel the DCE's official vehicle and that as the political head and chief public administrator of the district the DCE occasionally responded to invitations extended to the assembly.

Mr. Adomako said the DCE did not handle fiscal amount meant for fuel and protocol purposes like invitations to community festivals and other social functions on behalf of the assembly. "It is fallacious and untrue that he takes home GHC 500 weekly".

He said the Presiding Member takes a monthly allowance of GHC 100 and it was fixed when the district was created in 2008. Mr Adomako said it was not true that GHC 200 a week is given to Mr. Ishak Twumasi, chairman of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) in Sunyani West constituency.

"He has nothing official doing with the administration so how can we pay GHC 200 to him every week", Mr Adomako asked. He said the assembly has only four official vehicles two of which are in stable condition - a four-wheel drive and a Mahindra double-cabin pick-up used by the DCE and DCD respectively. The other two are a Nissan double-cabin pick-up and a Nissan patrol inherited from the Sunyani Municipal Assembly. Mr. Adomako said the two Nissan vehicles had been taken to repairs because of frequent breakdowns, "not that all our vehicles have been grounded for lack of fuel.

"We are not paying ourselves illegally from the assembly's resources and the assembly is always ready with its accounting books for auditing and scrutiny to set the records straight", he said.