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Regional News of Saturday, 21 February 2015

Source: GNA

Regional Minister tours La Nkwantanang Municipality

The Greater Accra Regional Minister, Mr Joseph Nii Laryea Afotey Agbo has visited the La Nkwantanang-Madina Municipal Assembly to interact with chiefs and district chief executives to acquaint himself with challenges in the municipality.

The Minister said the national and international environment and their socio-economic, political, technical and administrative dimensions had changed considerably and called for movements in development thinking.

He said some aspects of the assemblies work had become more critical and would require that they re-position themselves to offer pragmatic support to government to meet the demands of the citizenry.

He said everyone had a role to play to achieve the target set for the assembly and cautioned that he would not tolerate workers who would not pull their weight but rather derail efforts to achieve targets.

Mr Afotey-Agbo said revenue mobilization was one of the major challenges facing assemblies since most assemblies depended solely on the Common Fund for their development projects, thereby making any delay in the release of the fund to affect project implementation.

He urged municipal assemblies to use property rate, development permits, fees and fines, tourism sites levy, innovative measures and a lot more that they can rely on to generate the needed revenue to cater for their developmental projects.

“Block all loopholes and leakages in the system so that you can mobilize enough funds for these projects,” he said.

He advised the assemblies to continue to support the security agencies in the performance of their duties to continue to protect the territorial integrity of the country, lives and properties.

The Regional Minister said use of land-guards, sand winning, demarcation of properties and sale of land by various disputing stools and families to multiple buyers creates a state of insecurity and undermines development of the country hence it should be stopped.

Nii Kotey Dzor, Chief of Abokobi, expressed gratitude to the minister for his words of encouragement and for the projects in the municipality but urged the minister to ensure that more senior high schools were built.