Akatsi (V/R), Aug. 31, GNA - Mr. Peter Nortsu-Kotoe, Akatsi District Chief Executive (DCE), has called for a stop to the reckless dissipation of resources of the assembly.

He said the 486,019.37 Ghana cedis the assembly owed service providers as at January was "too huge" and constituted a major challenge to development.

Mr Nortsu-Kotoe, who was addressing an ordinary meeting of the assembly on Friday, said there were plans to repay the debt alongside building of projects and that development would not suffer unduly.

Mr. Nortsu-Kotoe said as a former DCE, he found the assembly's debt level strange as he (Mr Nortsu-Kotoe) left 40,000 Ghana cedis surplus account with no debt owed anyone.

He said records of some funds released to the assembly, including the HIPC, Road and Common Funds could not be traced. The DCE said the attempt to collate the assembly's indebtedness revealed serious lack of documentation as well as co-ordination among the various units within the assembly the past eight years. He called for a committee to look into the auctioning in 2008 of some moveable properties including a tractor and an Iveco truck jointly belonging to three district assemblies. Mr. Nortsu-Kotoe said the items had still not been paid for and the auctioneer had also absconded while it was proving difficult to retrieve the items.

He asked for investigation into how 100,000 Ghana cedis loan contracted in 2004 by the assembly from the National Investment Bank (NIB) for the establishment of a sugarcane processing factory at Akatsi and an additional 10,000 Ghana cedis withdrawn from the assembly's account for the sod-cutting of the factory and national farmers day activities were applied.

Mr. Nortsu-Kotoe said there was poor revenue collection in the district and proposed an education programme to re-orient the people on their tax obligations. 31 Aug. 09