Koforidua, Nov 22, GNA - The Minister for Local Government and Rural Development, Mr Joseph Yieleh-Chireh, on Monday urged Metropolitan, Municipal and District assemblies to be serious with the street naming exercise towards improving their tax collection.

Proper naming of streets and addresses would help identify property to be taxed to generate funds for the assemblies to improve their revenue base. He noted that the Minister of Finance and Economic Planning in the 2011 Budget Statement to Parliament identified Street Naming and Proper Address Systems by the assemblies as part of activities to generate more taxes for the nation and urged the assemblies' to initiate ways of embarking on that project.

The Local Government Minister was speaking at a technical meeting with board members and executive members of the Social Investment Fund (SIF), the Municipal Chief Executive and Coordinating Directors of the New Juaben Municipal Assembly and heads of beneficiary institutions of the Urban Poverty Reduction Programme under the SIF in Koforidua. He noted that with the just-ended National Housing and Population Census, more areas would be urbanized even though the rural component in terms of physical structure would be large.

Mr Yieleh-Chireh, therefore, called for proper street naming and addresses systems to meet that challenge.

According to him, the district assemblies were losing lots of revenue due to lack of identification of property, adding that, the naming of streets and proper address systems could, therefore, not be over-emphasized. He urged the SIF and the district assemblies to provide projects that would really relieve the people in terms of poverty reduction. Mr Yieleh Chireh advised that projects that had become "white elephants" should be looked at to find ways of converting them to suit the needs of the communities and to give value for money. He assured that the ministry would ensure a fair and equitable distribution of developmental projects under the SIF Urban Poverty Reduction Programme and other national development projects without discrimination.