? Assemblies get ?billions but no commensurate dev?t
? Assembly members should be empowered to monitor them

While the debate goes on among people of different political and ideological perspectives over what is hindering Ghana?s development, an insider in the structure of governance says the quandary is all about the attitude of the president?s representatives at the local level. The 36-year-old Member of Parliament (MP) for the Asunafo South constituency, Mr. Eric Opoku, told The Chronicle in an interview that with his sixteen-month parliamentary experience, he had come to the realization that the level of development at the Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDA) were far below the monies pumped annually to such local assemblies for development.

?I was shocked after becoming an MP and realized the quantum of monies that are sent to the assemblies.

In fact, the monies that go to the assemblies are enough to bring about appreciable development. I must emphasize that if the billions of cedis made available to the assemblies on yearly basis were to be used judiciously by the chief executives, Ghana would have seen monumental development,? the legislator said optimistically.

He argued that the only way of ensuring judicious utilization of resources at the local assembly level was to empower the local assembly members through payment of salaries and other benefits so that they would depart from the current practice of always being yes-men of chief executives to become effective monitors and supervisors over the activities of the Chief executives.

In line with the philosophy and ideology of the local government system, assembly members in the country constitute the local legislators who represent their towns and villages, collectively branded as electoral areas, in local government parlance. They perform the sensitive roles of making laws, approval of projects and programmes as well as budgets of their respective MMDAs.

The legislator maintained that if the assembly members performed virtually the same roles as MPs at the local levels, why should they not be resourced and remunerated just as national legislators, to enable them perform the monitoring and supervision role over the chief executives as MPs do over the president and ministers.

?You know, because the assembly members are not paid and resourced, they would always want to remain the darling boys of the chief executives by always acting to appease these representatives of the president with the view of being helped by the chief executives in one way or another.

Assembly members are not given even bicycles to enable them move around their electoral areas. They don?t challenge the chief executives over approved but unexecuted projects and always inflate costs of projects. If this is allowed to continue, there is no way we can develop,? he said.

When asked the basis for his argument, he said, ?Considering what we MPs are able to do with the little monies allocated to us as our share of the common fund, it is clear that the assemblies could do a lot for the people.?

Though the MP did not specifically mention corruption on the part of chief executives at the local political stratum, it was clear from his submission that he had the strong belief that political officials at that level squandered colossal amounts.

He referred to the quoting of ?245 million as being the cost of a three-classroom block with an office and a store, in his district as an example and wondered how and why such price quotations should be allowed to pass. ?In this case, we are being told that the cost of constructing each classroom is over ?80million. How can this be possible? But because assembly members are not motivated to do their work, chief executives are allowed to perpetrate these acts to their personal benefits,? he lamented.

The sources of revenue for the MMDAs in the country include, the District Assemblies? Common Fund (DACF), internally generated funds, 55% of stool land revenues, royalties, HIPC funds and other donations and sponsorships.

The papers checks indicated that the MP?s district, Asunafo South, which is one of the newly created districts in the Brong Ahafo Region, received ?6.008billion in 2005 as DACF. In addition, it received about ?2billion as HIPC fund allocation.

Apart from these monetary allocations from the central government, the district had its own internally generated funds, stool lands allocations and royalties from timber and other recourses.

Mr. Opoku noted that just as it is in his district, virtually all assemblies get similar resources every year, but no meaningful development takes place. He added that the situation becomes even more worrisome when one considers the fact that apart from these monetary allocations for development, there were other projects carried out in the districts through direct central government funding.