PAC heaps praises on Akatsi North

The Akatsi North District Chief Executive, Mr. James Gunu, has called for effective collaboration between the technocrats at the various Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies and their respective Chief Executives to help promote accountability while striving to achieve the desired development.

Mr. Gunu noted that most of the times lack of effective collaboration between technocrats such as the Budget officer, Finance officer, personnel manager and the Coordinating Directors creates problems that could easily be addressed if the relevant personnel worked as a team in the discharge of their respective duties.

DCE Gunu made the call in an interview he granted media men in Ho after being commended by the Public Account Committee of Parliament as the only District Chief Executive in the country who was able to provide receipt for all statutory deductions.

The young and determined DCE observed that the role of the Chief executive at the assemblies was more of a supervisory and with team work and with collaboration many of the cases that were normally referred to as misappropriation of funds would be prevented.

Mr. Gonu said most of the times some of the assemblies do not have receipts to cover transactions made between it and service providers, due to the under development of credit card usage in the country.

According to the Akatsi North DCE, some of the deductions made were not statutory but a resolution from the various assemblies authorizing the Administrator of the Common Fund to deduct such monies and that it takes hard working and dedicated technocrats like those at the Akatsi North Assembly to work closely with the Chief Executive to ensure that all monies spent or deducted were covered with official receipts to promote accountability.

He continued that MMDAs most of the times fail to demand receipts, a development which creates the impression that the money had been embezzled.

He, therefore, urged his colleagues to always demand receipts from service providers noting that almost all the MMDAs pay school fees for brilliant but needy students however; these students would fail to present receipts to the assemblies to cover such monies from their respective institutions.

Due to the absence of the receipts, the auditors have the perception that the money had been embezzled.

Touching on education, Mr. Gunu disclosed that the Assembly had resolved to organize teachers and parents awards day in 2015 to reward hard working teachers.

According to him, this year the District did not record zero percent in the BECE as it happened in the previous year and that some of the schools who performed poorly this time recorded 100% passes.

Mr. Gunu explained that the motivation to organize the awards ceremony for the teachers and parents stemmed from the fact that the performance of the BECE at the District level had moved from 18.8 percent in 2013 to 38.0 percent in 2014 noting that it was the efforts of both teachers and parents that contributed to the improved performance and teachers and parents would be identified for the awards to serve as motivation for others.

He announced that the Assembly had allocated GHC80, 000 to tackle infrastructure deficit in schools in the area through the provision of modern classrooms. The assembly would also provide 500 dual desks to schools in the District adding that the Assembly in collaboration with a Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) was providing classroom blocks at Ave-Atanve and Ave-Kpohe.

The DCE said the Assembly was also assisting households in the area to improve upon sanitary situations by helping them build modern toilet facilities to prevent open defecation saying the Assembly had already trained 60 sanitation Guards who are in the various communities serving as sanitation ambassadors including border communities.

Another project Mr. Gunu said the Assembly had embarked upon was data collection on all persons with disabilities and an album was being prepared and information indicating where they live, what they do for a living and the type of assistance that they must be offered to improve on their standard of living were being collated.

Mr. Gunu noted that the Assembly had identified that some of the people with disabilities engaged in what he described as cross-border applications were those people with disabilities and applied for support to at list three different assemblies and would be taking benefits from the assemblies at the same time.