Assembly member urged to be pro-active

Bawku (U/E), Dec. 8, GNA - Mr Abdul-Rahman Gumah, Bawku Municipal Chief Executive (MCE), has urged assembly members to take active interest in development projects being undertaken in their areas in spite of their political leanings, to forestall the execution of shoddy works by contractors.

He said they should not sit on the fence to allow bad contractors to deprive the communities of their fair share of national development. Mr Gumah, who said this at a meeting of the Assembly at Bawku on Wednesday, urged the members to shelve partisan politics when it came to the development of their areas.

He deplored the attitude of some assembly members' failure to participate in monthly clean-up exercises, adding that this had adversely affected the communities' response to maintaining clean environment resulting in filth engulfing the municipality. The M.C.E announced that the Assembly had instituted a "cleanest area award" and appealed to the Assembly members to adopt positive attitudes towards sanitation issues and live by example. Mr Samuel N'lary, Municipal Coordinating Director, said in spite of the several interventions under the Ghana Poverty Reduction Strategy (GPRS), most people were not accessing the fund due to ignorance. He urged assembly members to sensitise the people on the need to form cooperative unions in order to access the GPRS fund to reduce poverty.

The Upper East Regional Coordinator for Community Based Rural Development Project (CBRDP), Mr George Osei-Asibey announced that A21.4 billion would be disbursed to all the eight assemblies in the Region to undertake agricultural projects to improve the incomes of the people. He said CBRDP had identified and selected four communities in the Bawku municipality to enhance the capacity of the people at the grassroots level on a pilot basis to participate actively in governance.

The four communities are Morgnori, Kulungugu, Zawse and Widana. Each is to benefit from a 150 million cedi fund to support their area councils.

Mr Osei-Asibey gave the assurance that since the CBRDP was an offshoot of the Village Infrastructure Project (VIP), all uncompleted projects under the VIP would be given priority before new ones would begin.