Mr Paul Evans Aidoo, Western Regional Minister, has launched the public hearing of composite budgets of the Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies in the region, at Takoradi.

He performed the function for the five-day programme to begin, on behalf of Mr. Seth Tekper, Minister of Finance and Economic Planning.

Mr. Tekper said the government recognized the challenges in the economy and had initiated some bold decisions to reverse the situation in the 2014 Mid-Year Review Budget.

He said, “We need to also take prudent measures to reduce the high budget deficit and to achieve this, some structural reforms are being implemented”.

The reforms include the rationalization of Public Sector Staff which involve payroll upgrade and the policy of the net freeze on employment in some sectors public services, he said.

Others are the payroll management measures, which include Payroll Audits and Electronic System Payment Voucher (E-SPV) to reduce the incidence of “Ghost” workers on government payroll; and to empower managers with ready and timely information to manage more efficiently their payroll cost.

“We expect Metropolitan, Municipal and District Chief Executives to exercise strict oversight responsibilities on employees in their areas to assist the Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning to weed out all “Ghost names” from payrolls and control the wage bill to free resources to improve delivery of services,” he said.

Mr. Tekper said MMDAs must work hard to improve on internally generated funds to reduce their over dependence on central government revenues.

He said the assemblies must also ensure that resources are used more efficiently and effectively.

He announced that soon his Ministry in collaboration with the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development would issue guidelines to assist them to identify, mobilize and manage local revenues for improved service delivery.

Captain Anthony Cudjoe (rtd), Sekondi-Takoradi Metropolitan Chief Executive, who presided, said one of the objectives of composite budgets was to ensure that funds follow functions to give meaning to the decentralization policy.

He said another objective was to facilitate harmonized development and introduce an element of fiscal prudence in the management of public funds at the MMDA level.