Sun, 17 Jun 2007
Source: Nketiah, Seth
... per district earmarked from the District Assemblies Common Fund
I do not know if a common man like me can issue a press statement. But I find something important to our search for development that needs thinking through.About 9 years ago I did a small work on local governance finance in Ghana and I concentrated on Birim South District, Akim Oda.
Some of the findings were disturbing but the basic finding I had was that for the period 1994-1997 out of every 100 cedis mobilised only 24.72 cedis went into development projects that benefited local people. (Of course we all know the kind of development projects: KVIPs that are not functional now, citing of markets at places that were not beneficial to communities, shoddy school blocks that can’t see the life of a kid in primary education, etc, etc).
The work was for academic purposes so it ended with the usual academic marks.
Fortunately in 2001, there was this program on local government and the then Minister Baah-Wiredu challenged journalists and others to do effective research on local government with the view to making the ministry a force in Ghana’s new development direction. He assured the participants to do his best on the findings of their work.
I raised the issues in my work and he expressed his enthusiasm about reading it. I spent resources getting a copy for him. Well, only God knows the resting place of my hard pressed money on that copy now.
It is interesting to note that as at 2005 3,278,900,634,669 cedis (source: DACF website) or 3.3trillion cedis or average of $3,643,222.93 (at exchange rate of $1=9,000 cedis) have been released through the District Assembly Common Fund, DACF).
On doing a small analysis on the figure, I realised about $3,312,020.85 or 29,808,187,587.90 cedis (29.8billion cedis) have been averagely made available to each of the then 110 Districts. On an annual basis it means that each of the 110 Districts received 1,863,011,724.24 cedis approximately 1.9billion cedis from the DACF alone, and on a monthly basis the figure is 155,250,977 cedis from 1994-2005.
So the question: did each of the district assemblies managed to put a development project worth 155,250,977 cedis in their area every month? Certainly not!
This analysis should guide us into how much we prioritise development projects in our local development. There is no way we cannot fight poverty at the local level if we are systematically investing $17,250.10 or 155.250million cedis every 30 days in each district of Ghana on really development projects as the common fund stipulates. And looking at the ripple effects of investment, I do not accept that over the years such resources are put into productive and development ventures looking at the way abject poverty is swallowing even the then middle class citizens.
And more importantly when one factor in the virtually free labour communities put into community projects, then we must be having question marks on the leadership of local governments since this laudable investment fund idea was initiated.
Do we need foreign experts to tell us that the idea behind the common fund has been greatly under-utilised, misappropriated, and mismanaged? Can we strongly account for the monthly $17,250.10 made available to each district through the common fund as at 2005?
I believe this will be a wake-up call for the Administrator of the DACF to check if his outfit is getting the development feedback that commensurate with the average of $17,250.10 they ‘freely’ put at the disposal of district assemblies every 30 days.
Views expressed by the author(s) do not necessarily reflect those of GhanaHomePage.
... per district earmarked from the District Assemblies Common Fund
I do not know if a common man like me can issue a press statement. But I find something important to our search for development that needs thinking through.About 9 years ago I did a small work on local governance finance in Ghana and I concentrated on Birim South District, Akim Oda.
Some of the findings were disturbing but the basic finding I had was that for the period 1994-1997 out of every 100 cedis mobilised only 24.72 cedis went into development projects that benefited local people. (Of course we all know the kind of development projects: KVIPs that are not functional now, citing of markets at places that were not beneficial to communities, shoddy school blocks that can’t see the life of a kid in primary education, etc, etc).
The work was for academic purposes so it ended with the usual academic marks.
Fortunately in 2001, there was this program on local government and the then Minister Baah-Wiredu challenged journalists and others to do effective research on local government with the view to making the ministry a force in Ghana’s new development direction. He assured the participants to do his best on the findings of their work.
I raised the issues in my work and he expressed his enthusiasm about reading it. I spent resources getting a copy for him. Well, only God knows the resting place of my hard pressed money on that copy now.
It is interesting to note that as at 2005 3,278,900,634,669 cedis (source: DACF website) or 3.3trillion cedis or average of $3,643,222.93 (at exchange rate of $1=9,000 cedis) have been released through the District Assembly Common Fund, DACF).
On doing a small analysis on the figure, I realised about $3,312,020.85 or 29,808,187,587.90 cedis (29.8billion cedis) have been averagely made available to each of the then 110 Districts. On an annual basis it means that each of the 110 Districts received 1,863,011,724.24 cedis approximately 1.9billion cedis from the DACF alone, and on a monthly basis the figure is 155,250,977 cedis from 1994-2005.
So the question: did each of the district assemblies managed to put a development project worth 155,250,977 cedis in their area every month? Certainly not!
This analysis should guide us into how much we prioritise development projects in our local development. There is no way we cannot fight poverty at the local level if we are systematically investing $17,250.10 or 155.250million cedis every 30 days in each district of Ghana on really development projects as the common fund stipulates. And looking at the ripple effects of investment, I do not accept that over the years such resources are put into productive and development ventures looking at the way abject poverty is swallowing even the then middle class citizens.
And more importantly when one factor in the virtually free labour communities put into community projects, then we must be having question marks on the leadership of local governments since this laudable investment fund idea was initiated.
Do we need foreign experts to tell us that the idea behind the common fund has been greatly under-utilised, misappropriated, and mismanaged? Can we strongly account for the monthly $17,250.10 made available to each district through the common fund as at 2005?
I believe this will be a wake-up call for the Administrator of the DACF to check if his outfit is getting the development feedback that commensurate with the average of $17,250.10 they ‘freely’ put at the disposal of district assemblies every 30 days.
Views expressed by the author(s) do not necessarily reflect those of GhanaHomePage.
Columnist: Nketiah, Seth
