Koforidua, Dec. 19, GNA - The New Juaben Municipal Assembly is to get a new Jubilee Durbar grounds as part of the programmes planned for the celebration of the country's Golden Jubilee celebration in the Eastern Region.

The Jubilee Durbar Grounds, which would resemble that of the Independence Square in Accra would be constructed at Galloway, between the Eastern Regional Police Headquarters and the Full Gospel Fellowship Church building and is supposed to be completed before March 6, 2007. This was announced by the New Juaben Municipal Chief Executive, Nana Akwasi Adjei-Boateng in his address to the first session of the fifth New Juaben Municipal Assembly held at Koforidua on Tuesday. He said besides the Durbar Grounds, the municipality would also benefit from a jubilee toilet facility and explained that, those benefits were from the 20 million cedis budget planned for the celebration.

Nana Adjei-Boateng appealed to all to help keep the environment clean as the municipality planned to welcome visitors to the celebration and urged landlords with buildings along the main road to paint them.

Nana Adjei-Boateng said the government was in the process of acquiring land along the Akwadum road for the construction of the government's affordable housing programme.

He said under the programme, 63 blocks of flats would be constructed and expressed the hope that such an initiative would go a long way to help solve the acute housing problem in the New Juaben municipality.

Nana Adjei-Boateng said as at October 2006, the New Juaben Municipal Mutual Health Insurance Scheme (NJMMHIS) had registered a total of 70,068 persons representing 51.23 per cent of the 136,768 population of the municipality. He said out of the registered member, 55, 838 had fully paid their premiums and were benefiting from the Scheme at various hospitals and clinics.

Nana Adjei-Boateng said the Scheme had been able to mobilize 2.1 billion cedis, received a total amount of 6.2 billion cedis from the National Health Insurance Council, received a bill of 6.2 billion cedis from service providers in the Municipality and paid out 5.3 billion cedis.

He said the Management of the Scheme was in the process of negotiating with eight private clinics and five pharmacy shops in the municipality to serve as service providers of the Scheme.