The Ashanti Regional Minister, Mr Samuel Sarpong, has urged District Chief Executives (DCE’s) to make sure that they become accessible to the people.

They need to establish good working relations with people in communities under their watch, saying this would enable the DCE’s to know the concerns and needs of the communities they work and help meet their expectations.

Mr Sarpong made these comments at a meeting held with members of the Amansie Central District Assembly at Jacobu during a familiarisation tour.

He said the success of the decentralisation programme would largely depend on the extent of co-operation and responsiveness of the various stakeholders.

The visit provided him the opportunity to interact with the heads of departments, the chiefs and the people on ways to speed up the development of the area.

Mr Sarpong underlined the need to scale up the internal revenue mobilization effort to ensure transparency and accountability.

By doing that he added could benefit the central government’s Financial Organisational Assessment Tool (FOAT) to support its development projects.

Mr Sarpong urged the assembly to give priority to environmental sanitation to prevent diseases, mentioning that street naming and property addressing system must also engage serious attention to ensure security and social services in Jacobu.

Mr Emmanuel Dede Appiah, the DCE, complained about growing illegal mining in the area and said they needed the support of the Regional Security Council (REGSEC) to fight it.

He again had concerns about numerous school projects stalled over the lack of funding and appealed to the Ghana Education Trust Fund (GET-Fund) to make money available to complete them.

The Regional Minister later inspected some on-going government projects and inaugurated a dormitory block built for the Jacobu Senior High Technical with the capacity to accommodate 1,000 students.