The Finance and Economic Planning Minister, Mr. Yaw Osafo Maafo, has expressed disappointment with the audit reports of the district assemblies in the country.

According to him, ?after thoroughly scrutinizing the financial reports of 36 of the 110 district assemblies, I was very disappointed because they were full of inaccuracies. That, he said, stemmed from the fact that the budget officers lacked the requisite skills to prepare and manage effectively the assemblies financial resources.

Mr. Osafo Maafo was speaking at the national launch of the Local Governance Poverty Reduction support programme, here on Monday. It is one of the many technical programmes between the Governments of Ghana and Germany which fall under democracy, civil society and public administration. The Financial Manager therefore, stressed the need for the district assemblies to employ budget officers with the requisite qualifications and experience. Turning his attention to revenue collection, the Finance Minister, was not happy that the district assemblies wee not pulling their weight and urged them to attach special importance to that.

He pointed out that last year, government released about ?20 billion towards the improvement of sanitation in both Kumasi and Accra adding that ?this amount could have been raised by the two assemblies if they had put in place proper mechanisms for the collection of property rate so that government could have used the money released for the project (elsewhere).

Contributing, Mr. Peter Linder, German Ambassador to Ghana, expressed his country?s commitment to the decentralization programme saying, ?we see that democracy, transparency and good governance are taking root in this country.? He said decentralization was very important in the context of poverty alleviation and good governance. He hoped that the programme would effectively target the poor and guide investments at the district level, besides assisting in improving the supply and the quality of public services in the country.