Municipal Assembly organizes budget hearing

Dr. Nuhu Adams, Awutu-Senya East Municipal Chief Executive, has appealed to the Minister for Local Government and Rural Development to expedite action on the implementation of the Professor Bernneh’s Report in respect of the boundary dispute between them and the Ga South Assembly.

He said the delay in the implementation of such a Report, had hampered the Internal Generation Fund (IGF), Development and Security of Awutu-Senya East Municipality.

Dr. Adams made the appeal through a team from the Ministry of Finance and the Central Regional Coordinating Council (RCC) at the 2015 Budget hearing for the Municipality at Kasoa.

The event which was to create a platform for the ordinary citizens to add their views on the municipal budget before it was approved by the assembly members, was attended by traditional rules, representatives of civil society organizations, heads of department, and assembly members.

According to the MCE, when the Report was implemented, it would help improve the Assembly IGF, to supplement what the Central Government gave for development.

In a speech delivered by Dr. George Holdbrook, Central Regional Budget Analyst, leader of the team, on behalf of Mr. Seth E. Terkper, Minster for Finance, he said, the hearing should not be reduced to mere formalities, but should continuouslyprove a platform for open and transparent discussions on how limited budgetary resources could be allocated to priority programmes and projects to advance the development of the nation.

'As you know government is implementing a number of fiscal consolidation measures to improve and restrict expenditure growth in order to create more fiscal space for funding public service,' he added.

The Minister stated further that it was important that as they looked for areas of improving revenues, MMDAs would have to step up their own revenue mobilization drive, to generate additional resources to improve local level service and to reduce dependency on the central government.

He charged district chief executives to continue to lead the process so as to ensure that their priority programmes were reflected in the budget to avoid budget overruns during implementation.

Mr. Samuel Darrah, Awutu-East Municipal Assembly Budget Analyst, led the management of the Assembly to present a 42-page power point presentation on their composite budget amounting to GH¢ 10,690,105.82 for 2016.

He said since the composite budget was prepared in consultation with chiefs and people in the Six Zonal Councils, the Assembly, would rectify all concerned issues that came out at the event, in order to have a credibly document to work with to accelerate the development of the Municipality.