President John Evans Atta Mills has said the newly inaugurated District Assemblies “have the opportunity to be different and unique.”

President Mills said this in an address read for him by Professor Kofi Awoonor, Chairman of Council of State, at the inauguration of the Ho-West District at Dzolo-kpuita on Thursday.

He said the new Districts would not have to make the mistakes and contend with the difficulties of their predecessors in the areas of “sanitation and waste management” and “spatial and settlement planning.”

President Mills said each of the new district assemblies would receive a seed capital of 42 million Ghana cedis and “additionally, they have been factored into the 2010 Common Fund allocation formula and will also be factored into the District Development Fund (DDF) formula.”

He said each of the new Assemblies would be provided with an office block, Assembly hall, bungalows for the District Chief Executives, and Co-ordinating Directors and Junior Staff Quarters for some staff as well as “other operational logistics and equipment support.”

President Mills enumerated a number of recommendations made by the Constitutional Review Commission in relation to Local Government and Decentralization which when passed into Law by Parliament would be a major fillip to the new Assemblies to start off with.

These, he said, included the election of District Chief Executives by the people, delimiting the tenure of the DCEs to many terms as they would be elected by the constituents.

Presiding Members would also be elected by two-thirds of the members present and voting.

President Mills said an Independent Emoluments Commission is to fix the salaries of Assembly members while the power to “hire and fire” staff would be transferred from the head of the Local Government Service to the District Assemblies.

Assembly bye-laws would no longer have to be gazetted to become legally binding. They would just have to be put on notice boards of each Assembly and published in the newspapers.

“It is clear that a lot has been achieved in the local government and decentralization sector, and yet a lot more remains to be done.

This is what should guide us as we move into the era of the Sixth Government of the Fourth Republic,” President Mills said.**