Play watchdog role well - JAK to assembly members

Kumasi, Aug. 25, GNA - President John Agyekum Kufuor has told assembly members to play their watchdog role effectively and hold District, Municipal and Metropolitan Chief Executives accountable. He said the success of the government's decentralisation programme depended on the efficiency of the assemblies.
President Kufuor was addressing members and the staff of the Kumasi Metropolitan Assembly (KMA) as part of his official tour of the Ashanti Region on Monday.
He expressed worry about the situation where assembly members become contractors overnight and are always scrambling and fighting over the award of projects.
The President reminded them that if they resorted to illegitimate means to take contracts they would not have the moral courage to question acts of impropriety on the part of the Chief Executives. He reiterated that it was their duty to ensure that there was high level of discipline and transparency in the financial administration of the assemblies, adding, expenditures should be made through the approved budget.
President Kufuor recalled his early political days at KMA then known as Kumasi City Council (KCC) in 1966 as a Deputy Town Clerk and a year later as substantive Town Clerk at the age of 28, and asked the assembly to help restore Kumasi to its former status as the Garden City of West Africa.
This demands working with diligence, he said, and re-affirmed his government's determination to make the decentralisation programme work. Mr Maxwell Kofi Jumah, Metropolitan Chief Executive, said there was now total peace and harmony at the KMA and that it has enabled the assembly to focus on its development programmes.
President Kufuor had earlier inspected the 30 billion-cedi Kumasi Sanitation Landfill and Sceptic treatment facility being funded by the World Bank and the Government of Ghana.
The project, which is about 90 per cent complete, is part of the Urban Environment and Sanitation Project.
The President also inaugurated a three million-dollar Alcatel Switch installed by the Ghana Telecommunication Company (Ghana Telecom) in Kumasi.
With this, Direct Exchange Telephone lines in Ashanti had now been increased from 20,000 to 55,000 lines while the problems customers faced in accessing their telephones are effectively over.
The President, during the inauguration rang and spoke to Professor Albert Owusu Sarpong, Ghana's Ambassador in Paris, France.