The Tamale Metropolitan Assembly under its novelty Mayors Excellence Awards scheme will be awarding about fifty individuals and organizations who have contributed in diverse ways to the promotion and development of the Tamale metro.

The awards which is slated for 30th June 2018 at the Modern City Hotel, will give special recognition to former Chief Executives of Tamale. 58 members of the Assembly will also receive certificates of merits.

Again individuals and organizations from various field of endeavors including; education, health, sanitation, sports development, philanthropic, entrepreneurship, agriculture, tradition and culture, arts and culture will receive the coveted Mayor Excellence Awards for their contribution in the development of the metropolis.

The Assembly received 400 nominations in which the vetting committee Chair by Madam Mariama Issifu Alhassan and supported by Dr. Sulemana Abdulai, Dr. Abdulai Salifu, Mr. Nana Boakye vetted and selected few for the prestigious Mayor Excellence Awards.

At a Press Conference today, the Metropolitan Chief of Tamale, Hon Iddrisu Musah Superior reiterated that, people should be awarded when alive and not when they are dead.

“Thank people when they are alive and not when they are dead so they are going to be awarded, they are going to get beautiful plaques and then the metropolitan assembly will be saying a huge thank you to them and I'm encouraging them to join us, we don’t want them to seat on the fence. These are people with huge fantastic ideas and we want them to come on board and help us push the metropolis to greater height”.

He said, former secretaries and chief executives of the assembly have contributed positively towards the development of Tamale, “every individual former District Secretary, Former Municipal Chief Executive, Former Metro Chief Executive have in one way or the other contributed to the development of Tamale and therefore it will not be out of place for the Tamale Metro Assembly to call these people and regroup them and say look today we want to say thank you for the kind of jobs you guys have done for Tamale… every single individual who have serve as the lead city worker of Tamale has done a yogh man’s job and therefore the kinds of development we have seen consistently in Tamale was led at a particular of our development history by one of the former district chief executive… so it is key it is important we have to thank them… you don’t thank people when they are dead”.

The Tamale Mayor said, Assembly members will be awarded for their selfless services in the grassroots level, “The assembly persons we all know in some parts of the world for example, I was told that I didn’t go I was told that in some parts of Nigeria assembly persons are paid. They are monthly remunerated by government, in Ghana it is not the case. Assembly persons are doing the most basic grassroots work for the local government system and the people of Ghana and if the local government system of Ghana works then it means Ghana is working.

Ghana is in units, we have several local governments system and if every local government system achieve its objective then it means the whole country will rise and I tell you, the local government system cannot achieve our objective if we failed to appreciate the kind of work people at the local level do especially our assembly members. These are unpaid people, they don’t get any salary from government.

In fact I have evidence that some of these assembly men use their pocket money to do community work for their people. In this country I haven’t heard, and I have never heard in this country that an assembly person have been appreciated by a local government. I think it is improper, it’s not right, and we should be able to encourage them, tell them that even though they are doing voluntary work, we appreciate you. You have decided to come and do your work but the kind of work you are doing we appreciate you.

We are able to have an orderly governance structure at the local level because we have an assembly, the assembly is the highest decision making body of the local assembly, we have the executive authority which is also drawn from the assembly. Without these two bodies we are unable to work, the whole metropolitan assembly or the whole local government unit at the various assemblies will become completely unworkable.

So they deserve an award and on the bases of that, the Tamale metropolitan assembly have decided to issue certificate of recognition to every assembly member, 58 assembly members would receive a certificate of recognition on the day of the awards”.

Hon Musah Superior hinted that, the Vice President of the Republic, H.E. Alhaji Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia will be the guest of honor for the prestigious awards.

Other government appointees have also confirmed to attend while senior members of the civil service, the security agencies, senior politicians, opinion leaders, imams, chiefs, pastors and other importance personalities have been selected to attend.