Cape Coast, July 29, GNA - Nana Ato Arthur, the Central Regional Minister, has called on district assemblies in the region to "plug the many leakages" in their revenue mobilization and monitoring mechanisms.

He queried how the Awutu-Efutu-Senya Assembly, whose district was larger than the Ajumako-Enyan-Essiam District, projected to raise similar revenue of one billion cedis like the Ajumako assembly. Nana Arthur who made the call at a meeting with members of the Central Regional Coordinating Council (RCC) at Cape Coast, attributed the situation to the fact that most of the assemblies had weak internal and monitoring control systems.

He told them that it was not enough that as at the first half of this year, all the 13 assemblies in the region had realized about 7 billion cedis out of their total budgeted internally generated revenue of 16.5 billion cedis, representing just 42 percent of the target. He also expressed concern that during the period under review 10 of the assemblies recorded deficits in expenditure without reference to the annual budget and described the practice as "unacceptable" and must be stopped.

The minister told them to team up with all stakeholders and work harder if the living conditions of their people would improve and was unhappy that only 30 percent of development projects had been completed within schedule.

He mentioned delays in contract award processes, incompetence on the part of consultants in designing and supervising projects as well as the delay in the release of the Common Fund as some of the problems that hinder the early completion of projects.

Touching on the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), he said a total of 612,000 representing a third of people in the region have registered with a total premium of 2.2 billion cedis and that the HIV/AIDS prevalence rate dropped from 55.4 in 2003 to 2.9 in 2005.