Are you living in either the Brong Ahafo or Western regions? If you are, beware: the District Assembly Common Fund allocated to where you are could be slashed because of the high levels of misuse of the fund in these regions.

That is one of many recommendations Prof. Emmanuel Armah, a senior scholar at the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) has suggested to instill financial discipline and confidence in the district assembly system.

Better still, regions, which prudently manage their share of the Common Fund (CF), should be allocated more of the national cake going directly to the District Assemblies.

The Brong Ahafo and Western regions suffered a disproportionate misuse of the Common Fund at the district level, Prof. Armah said at an IEA policy forum in Accra

Armah's study was based on the auditor's report on three (1994, 1995 and 1996) out of the nine years the District Assembly Common Fund (DACF) has been in place.

Set up by Article 252 of the 1992 Constitution, the CF was introduced in 1994 to support the District Assemblies. By the constitutional provision not less than five per cent of total government funds must be paid into the Common Fund every quarter.

And in 1994 ?27 billion went into the Fund. This jumped to ?56.6 billion in1995. It rose to ?81.7 billion in 1996.

But "almost 30 per cent of Brong Ahafo's revenue was siphoned into the dark abyss of malfeasance in 1994, 15 per cent of the Western region's revenues suffered a similar fate," he said.

"Although, the relative share of misappropriation declined for most regions, the Brong Ahafo region is an exception. After a dramatic decline to less than five per cent of revenues in 1995, the burden of misappropriation increased to almost 10 per cent of revenues in 1996," he added.

Predictably, a section of the participants at the IEA organised discussion on Wednesday including MPs and district chief executives rejected the suggestion to starve assemblies which mismanage their share of the Common Fund.

M.A. Seidu, NDC MP for Wa Central pointed out that ordinary people at the community level are barely involved in the management of the funds therefore should not suffer for the ineptitude of district assembly officials.

Seidu agreed with Prof. Armah that the misused money should be retrieved and the incompetent public officials punished.

Abuse of the CF within the period of the research -1994 to 1996 - were massive.

The total value of misused funds amount to US$4.69 million in 1994. This rose to $6.39 million the following year. It shot up to $7.20 million in 1996.

In percentage terms, the figures represent 26.7 per cent of total inflows in 1994, 24.3 per cent in 1995 and 22.2 per cent in 1996, indicating marginal rate of decline in the misuse of the funds.

Even though some of the expenditures were justified, Prof. Armah pointed out that they were incurred contrary to what was constitutionally permissible.

The misuse of the Common Fund is in the form of unaccounted hikes in project costs, overpayments, stores paid for but not supplied and lack of effective monitoring by the Regional Co-coordinating Councils (RCCs)

Citing the Greater Accra RCC as an example, Prof. Armah said the Auditor General's Report noted that the Council "failed to undertake effective monitoring of the Assemblies in its jurisdiction. On the contrary monies were used to fund unauthorized activities such as funeral celebrations and capital expenditures."

At the heart of the current and incessant clamour by opinion leaders in some communities for new districts to be created is the desire to have access to the resources of the Common Fund.

Capt. (rtd) Nkrabeah Effah-Dartey, deputy Local Government Minister hinted at the forum that the ministry has received about 79 applications for new districts to be carved out.

But it is not only mismanagement at the local level that tends to raise the cost of operating the District Assembly.

Delays in disbursement of funds have adverse impacts on the execution of development programmes in the districts and also on the liquidity status of the assemblies. They contribute to cost overruns in project execution.

"Cost overruns can be more substantial particularly in a high inflation environment like Ghana," Prof. Armah explained.

The perennial delays in the release of the funds also contribute to the build up of deficits at the district level when commitments are made in anticipation of the DACF inflows.

The IEA study showed that it is not only District Assemblies that are misusing the CF. The Administrator of the DACF, constitutionally mandated to distribute the Common Fund is deeply involved.

There are instances where the Administrator with the authority of Cabinet incurred expenses on behalf of the District Assemblies from the Common Fund.

Prof. Armah said these expenses were treated as payments to the District Assemblies even though they were not consistent with the "approved development budget of the respective District Assemblies."

The Auditor's report is riddled with all forms of abuse: unjustified review of project costs, failure to recover unlawfully granted loans and the use of the fund for recurrent instead of capital expenditures as stipulated in the law setting up the Common Fund.

He suggested a review of guidelines of the Reserve Fund to minimise indiscretion and abuse.

What about the poor database of all the 110 assemblies? A share of the Fund should be set aside to create a properly kept database to smooth out monitoring to minimise abuse by the assemblies.