Assembly members urged to cooperate with MMDCEs

Assembly members have been urged to cooperate with their respective metropolitan, municipal and district chief executives (MMDCEs) to fast-track development.

Mr Evans Bobie, the Deputy Brong-Ahafo Regional Minister, who gave the advice, said he was unhappy that partisan politics continued to fuel disunity between assembly members and their MMDCEs and slowed down development.

He said assembly members, as the representatives of the people, played crucial role within the decentralisation concept adding that their actions and inactions could either forestall or speed up development.

Mr Bobie was speaking at the opening session of a workshop on the new Local Governance Act, 2016 (Act 936) for assembly members in the Brong-Ahafo Region on Monday.

The Local Government Act 936 contains 236 sections and replaces the repealed Act 462.

The workshop was jointly organised by the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development and the Institute of Local Government Studies, with support from the Inter-Ministerial Coordinating Committee on Decentralisation.

He said the Government relied on them to explain its policies and programmes to enable the ordinary Ghanaian to understand them better.

Mr Bobie, who is the Member of Parliament for Asunafo North, therefore underlined the need for the assembly members to bury their political differences to promote and deepen peaceful coexistence among each other and their MMDCEs.

He charged them to help find innovative ways of raising funds locally to augment the District Assembly Common Fund for development.

Dr George Fredua, a lecturer at the Institute of Local Government Studies, Mr John Agama, a Consultant at the Institute, and Mr Johnathan Azasoo, a Director at the National Development Planning Commission, took the assembly members through the new Act.