KMA sinking in GHc50 million debt; mayor sends SOS

The Kumasi Metropolitan Assembly has appealed to the government for an urgent financial support and legal assistance to deal with 50,602,874.43 judgment debt and 49 court cases.

According to the mayor of Kumasi, Osei Assibey Antwi, the situation is distracting the Assembly from effectively carrying out its mandate and damaging its image.

Metropolitan Chief Executive disclosed this at his maiden sessional address attended by assembly members, staff of the assembly, political party members and the general public.

His address touched on sanitation, financial situation of the assembly, revenue generation, legal, administration, security and others.

Mr. Osei Assibey Antwi said the assembly is currently standing at the edge of a cliff and if they do not tread with caution, tact and quickly develop a turnaround strategy to manage their debt stock, they shall fall into an abyss of insolvency.

He said the debt was as a result of the Assembly’s failure to meet its financial obligations to contractors and service providers who had performed their side of the contracts between 1992 and 2012. He said other actions of the Assembly has also led to some judgment debts.

He said an amount of GHC 1,235,017.62 had already been garnished to pay two of the judgment creditors between January and August 2016.

The KMA Boss who was dismayed said the assembly would seek legal opinion including the option of resorting to Alternative Dispute Resolution [ADR] to deal with all the outstanding court cases.

He announced plans to set up a project monitoring and control mechanism to ensure that the business of the assembly was run with a high sense of discipline and responsibility.

Mr. Osei Assibey Antwi said his engagements with some of the contractors as well site visits gave a clear indication that some of the service providers have not been living up to expectation.

He stated that, in order to accelerate progress on the backlog of projects whose completion times have elapsed, the Assembly shall review all existing contracts including those that are pending.