Alhaji Mohammed Muniru Limuna, Northern Regional Minister, has charged the metropolitan, municipal and district assemblies (MMDAs) in the region to seek ways to improve on internal revenue generation to enhance development.

He said: “We must challenge ourselves by looking beyond the traditional sources and engaging in projects that will generate the needed revenue.”

Alhaji Limua said this when he addressed the last Northern Regional Coordinating Council meeting in Tamale attended by the region's metropolitan, municipal and district chief executives, their coordinating directors, presiding members and some heads of department on Tuesday.

The meeting discussed the District Assemblies Common Fund for 2015 and other issues affecting the development of the region.

Alhaji Limuna said: “It is disheartening to observe that as at September 2014, MMDAs in the region collectively had collected only 58.66 per cent of the expected revenue.”

He said the tendency for many of the MMDAs to declare that they had nothing to generate local revenue was completely unacceptable adding those MMDAs collecting less than 30 per cent of their projected revenue must sit up.

He, therefore, suggested that MMDAs should give the needed attention to the concept of public private partnerships in their activities to generate the needed resources for development.

He reminded MMDAs of the Government’s commitment towards addressing issues of sanitation, education, health and agriculture among others and urged them to devise means to keep the environment clean by enforcing the bye-laws as well as executing projects and programmes on other pressing issues.

Alhaji Limuna emphasised the need for team work at the MMDAs saying; “let us make effort to make our MMDAs more functional in responding to the needs of the people.”