Kyebi, March 1, GNA - The East Akim District Assembly was able to raise 1.07 billion cedis from its traditional sources of revenue as against the projected figure of 1.28 billion cedis for 2006. The District Chief Executive, Mr Emmanuel Victor, revealed this at the first ordinary meeting of the assembly at Kyebi on Thursday. The two Members of Parliament for the area, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo and Mr J. B. Danquah-Adu added.

Mr Asihene said though the revenue performance of the assembly for the year under review was encouraging, there was room for improvement and urged the Finance and Administration Sub-committee of the assembly to come out with strategies to improve upon their performance.

Mr Asihene said all the major roads in the district were either undergoing rehabilitation or have been slated for rehabilitation and these include the Kyebi town roads, Asiakwa town roads, New Tafo/Obodanase and New Tafo-Tontro roads.

He said as at January, the District Health Insurance Scheme (DHIS) had registered 36,360 persons out of the population of 105,000 people in district and this represents 35 per cent coverage. Mr Asihene said the registration of members was still going on and expressed the hope that by July the DHIS could register over 60 per cent of the population of the district.

Mr Asihene said the district was faced with low usage of iodated salt and non-iodated salt was still being sold on the markets in the district.

He called on the Social Services and the Justice Sub-committee of the assembly to come out with the appropriate strategies to combat the problem.

Nana Akufo-Addo said the success of the NHIS, the Capitation Grant and the School Feeding Programme were the demonstration of the good intentions of the government for the people of Ghana.

He said the three programmes and other successful programmes that the government had pursued would open the campaign of the New Patriotic Party during the next elections in 2008.

Mr Danquah-Adu said apart from funding from the Common Fund, HIPC and GETfund, he had been able to mobilize financial resources from other areas to invest a total of over 1.74 billion cedis into development projects in the Abuakwa North Constituency within the last two years.