Bolgatanga (U/E), July 11, GNA - All the nine District Assemblies in the Upper East Region are to benefit from a 4,751,022.3 Ghana Cedis grant from the District Development Facility.

The facility is rated, based on the performance of Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies in the administration of good governance.

Mr Javis Avoka, Regional Secretary of Northern Patriots in Research and Advocacy (NORPRA), a civil society organization working to promote social justice and equity, announced these

in Tamale.

This was when he and other members of the group called on Mr. Mark Woyongo, the Regional Minister, in Bolgatanga, to discuss the performance of the districts, regarding "the Functional Organizational Assessment Tools" (FOAT) test.

Mr Avoka explained that the facility, which is different from the District Assembly Common Fund, provides additional resources for district level development projects.

The NORPRA Regional Secretary said that the nine districts in the Region qualified for the 2009 FOAT test and commended Mr. Woyongo for his visionary leadership and hard work, which enabled the districts to qualify for the FOAT.

The Regional Secretary of NORPRA, Mr Javis Avoka said that each of the 9 districts had fulfilled the minimum conditions of FOAT and scored 60 per cent performance.

Mr. Avoka appealed to Government to consider poverty levels in the disbursement formula instead of distributing the "Entitlement Component" of the facility, based on equality, population and land area of the Assembly.

He said that NORPRA would assist in monitoring the judicious utilization of resources in the Region.