Bolgatanga Municipal Assembly goes digital

The Bolgatanga Municipal Assembly has started a digitised property rates collection process to whip up revenue generation.

This forms part of the 2020 resolution of the Assembly to ensure that spatial property and businesses in the Municipality are captured into the Assembly’s new database for proper collection of rates.

Mr Joseph Atura Amiyuure, the Municipal Chief Executive, in an interview with the Ghana News Agency, noted that the exercise would enable the Assembly to collect adequate information on property and take steps to ensure people paid their bills regularly.

He said the new improved system would be used to constantly send reminders and alerts to property owners to update payments of their bills while a task force would be on guard to enforce the new plans.

That, he said, would help the Municipality to improve upon its infrastructure and social services to various sectors, especially on peace and security, education, health and the provision of water.

Ms Juliana Agyeyomah, the Planning Officer of the Assembly, said the revenue collectors and a special taskforce had undergone training and were adequately prepared to visit various defaulting owners of property in the area.

She said the Assembly was using the digitised address system among other data to build a proper data system to ensure readily available and reliable information.

Ms Agyeyomah said the lack of such information in previous years, coupled with haphazard nature of putting up buildings, made it difficult to trace the various businesses and property, resulting in poor revenue collection.

In the President’s recent inaugural address of the assemblies, he entreated all Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies to adopt special client sensitive approaches to mobilise revenue devoid of challenges to the rate payers.

He urged the Assemblies to use the newly introduced digital address system and the Ghana Post GPS to enhance Internally Generated Funds (IGFs), particularly in the area of property rates.