The ‘Progressive Assembly Members’ and former assembly members in the Volta Region have called for the establishment of an Electoral Area Common Fund to enable assembly members to undertake development projects in their electoral areas.

They insisted that they were the true development agents in their communities and that such a fund would definitely enhance their development agenda.

The chairman of the group, Mrs Martha Gato-Lagble, said at a recent press conference in Ho that putting assembly members on a payroll would also enhance local governance in the country.

She said assembly members played numerous roles in the communities, adding that the era when assembly members worked as ‘sacrificial service renders’ should now become a thing of the past.”

“The assembly member is the taxi driver, the money lender, the sanitation officer, the judge and the dispute resolution expert, among other roles, in most communities,” said Mrs Gato-Lagble.

Still on the Electoral Area Common Fund, Mrs Gato-Lagble said it would also serve as bait for hesitant but more qualified persons with varied backgrounds to participate in local governance, to inject greater efficiency into the system.

She said the proposal to give assembly members an additional role of collecting birth and death data in their electoral areas was laudable and would be better carried out with an electoral area common fund.

According to her, the successful implementation of such a plan would help to provide vital information on neonatal and maternal mortality, which had been lacking for many years.

Mrs Gato-Lagble entreated the media to commit greater zeal and enthusiasm to the coverage of activities of the assemblies across the country to keep the people well informed all the time.