Damongo (N/R), Dec 19, GNA - The West Gonja District Assembly could generate a little over 288 million cedis out of an estimated 638 million cedis as at October from its internally generated funds, representing 45 per cent of its total revenue projection. The reason for this poor performance is the inability of the assembly to collect the approved property rate pegged at 310 million cedis for the year.
Mr Yakubu Zakaria, West Gonja District Chief Executive, said this at the third ordinary meeting of the assembly on Friday. He said apart from a number of parastatals operating in the district that have been served with demand notices to pay their property rates, private owners claimed that they had not been paying property rates. "How can we develop the area when the residents deliberately refuse to pay their taxes towards a common good?"
Mr Zakaria said the assembly this year received more than 3.4 billion cedis as part of its share of the District Assemblies' Common Fund. On Education, the DCE said during the year, the Assembly completed a number of community initiated school projects at Boachipe, Kojokura, Torsinape, Kpantinya,Juku, Kotito Number Three and 16 other communities.
He said the Damongo Senior Secondary School would be upgraded into a model school and the government had allocated 10 billion cedis for the purpose.
He said eleven contractors had started work on the various project sites in the school.
Mr Zakaria said under the financial support scheme for students in tertiary institutions, 167,952,000 cedis have been disbursed to 369 students, 56 teacher trainees, 21 nurses and other needy students. He said the Assembly supported two other students who excelled at the SSSCE and were offered scholarship to study medicine in Russia with 4 million cedis to meet their travel expenses.