Shama District Assembly has subjected itself to public scrutiny as a way of ensuring transparency and accountability in handling public funds.
Members of the community converged on the Shama Senior High School’s assembly hall, where they were briefed by the Chief Executive, Ms Emilia Arthur on income and expenditure and how much was generated internally.
She said last year the assembly was expecting more than GH¢2 million as its share of the Common Fund, but received only GH¢753,000 which were directed towards socio-economic development, environment and administrative work.
This year the district was expecting GH¢1.92 million but had so far received only GH¢176,000 while internally, the assembly recorded additional GHc131,000 and GHc114,395 last year and as at the end of June this year respectively.
The chief executive said other corporate bodies, GETFund and donors had also contributed to the efforts of the assembly to meet its needs in the areas of water, education and staff capacity building among others.
The chief executive said the reason for holding the public forum was to ensure that the people were aware of the income and expenditure of the assembly.
She said the disbursment of monies that were received in the form of Common Fund or from the corporate bodies must be explained to people on how their monies were used.
The DCE said, “We have to from time to time hold this public forum as required by the local government law to ensure that we mention to the people our plans and also afford the people the opportunity to demand answers.”
Ms Arthur said they would do everything possible to ensure that monies due for development were directed to it.
Areas of health, education and other social infrastructure, she said, were very important and urged members of the community to pay their taxes since it would be put to good use.
She commended the people of Shama for their contribution in the areas of District Development Fund which also played a very vital role in the work of the assembly.
The people asked questions and commended the district chief executive for the bold initiative to subject her administration to public scrutiny.
The people were later taken to project sites to match what was mentioned on the paper with physical structure on the ground.
No comments:
Post a Comment