The Head of Local Government Service, Engineer Dr. Nana Ato Arthur has charged the various Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies to desist from awarding new contracts once ongoing projects are incomplete.
According to him, the government will no longer commit resources into new projects to the neglect of uncompleted projects.
He revealed that government’s recent scrutiny of MMDAs groundworks uncovered several uncompleted projects whereas new ones have been awarded.
“While they complained of inadequate funds, they were awarding new contracts expected to be funded from the same sources of funding.”
“This is certainly a very bad management practice and unprofitable use of scarce resources. MMDAs cannot solve all their problems in a day and it is incumbent on us all to ensure that projects began are completed.”
Engineer Dr. Nana Ato Arthur was addressing staff of Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs) as part of his familiarisation tour of the Northern Region.
He admonished heads of departments at the assemblies to stop commuting to work daily outside their districts.
“The practice whereby staff of district assemblies refuse to stay close to their places of work even though official accommodation has been provided them but prefer commuting from the regional capital is unacceptable.”
He further condemned the Regional Coordinating Councils apathy towards monitoring and supervising the core functions of the MMDAs.
He called for the suspension of Regional Coordinating Councils request for staff promotions and transfers saying, “I condemn the practice in the local government service where Regional Coordinating Councils (RCCs) requested for approval for promotions in various classes, without ensuring vacancies existed in the various grades the request were being sought for.”
“When such requests are refused because of non-availability of vacancies, then there is pandemonium. I am therefore, entreating you to always link up with the human resource management directorate to clarify all thorny issues on promotions and upgrading.”
“It must also be noted that promotion to a new grade is now strictly linked to the availability of vacancy to that grade and funds to pay the officer. This means adherence to our various staffing norms is critical to enable the MMDAs and RCCs identify existing vacancies,” he emphasised.
Engineer Dr. Nana Ato Arthur promised to prioritize perennial capacity building of staff of the Local Government Service to enhance their efficiency.
“It is my vision to promote ICT to improve revenue mobilisation in the MMDAs. Most assemblies have huge potentials to improve their revenues and therefore, reduce their over reliance on Central Government releases to finance their development projects. This can be maximised if they adopt ICT strategies to facilitate identification of properties and other internally generated revenue mobilization sources,”
The Northern Regional Minister, Salifu Saeed said funding of governments programmes remained a major challenge to the MMADs.
“Whilst I call for the strongest attention for this fact, I would appeal to MMDAs to find a way through their constrained funds, to provide these departments the leverage to operate effectively. Indeed their non-functioning renders MMDAs ineffective.”
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(Via: CitiFM Online Ghana)
