Ho, Sept. 15, GNA - About 40 billion cedis would be spent on the rehabilitation of existing roads and construction of new ones within the Ho Municipality in the next three years. Mr Mawutor Goh, Ho Municipal Chief Executive announced this when addressing the Third Ordinary Meeting of the Fourth Session of the Municipal Assembly at Ho on Thursday.

He said the Department of Urban Roads (DUR), which commenced business in Ho in conformity with the Assembly's new status, had awarded contracts for the rehabilitation of roads some of which had been completed.

Mr Goh said tenders would be opened in October this year, for construction works to begin on some new road projects by November. He announced that roads outside Ho would be tackled given the peculiar nature of the municipality, which now comprised the Ho West and Central constituencies.

The Municipal Chief Executive said for the past four years 84 development projects within the municipality estimated at about 16 billion cedis had been completed out of which education infrastructure was about 7.2 billion cedis.

"The next four years will be devoted to further strengthening of education and health infrastructure in the Municipality", Mr Goh added. He appealed to Assembly members to show keen interest in the implementation of the Free Compulsory Universal Basic Education (FCUBE) programme and the basic schools pupils feeding programme on pilot basis that begun this academic year.

Mr Goh said the Assembly had paid 42 million cedis being the outstanding contributions owed by communities under the first phase of the Social Investment Fund (SIF) therefore, the Municipal Assembly had qualified to participate in the second phase of the programme. He said the Assembly had begun negotiations for a sister city relationship with a city in Canada.

Mr Goh said the budgetary proposal for the relationship was estimated at about 101,090 dollars, the World Bank would sponsor with about 75,970 dollars, Ho Municipal Assembly and the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development would support with 25,120 dollars.