Mr Donkris Mevuta, the Executive Director of Friends of the Nation has stressed the need for assemblies to positively engage with the private sector to drive revenue mobilization for the development of the assemblies.

“As a private sector, you must also be interested in following up on assemblies plan and developmental indicators to ensure that revenues collected were used for the needed projects in communities and not only in fee fixing alone”, he added.

Mr Mevuta speaking with the Ghana News Agency on issues of accountability and transparency in the assembly system said it was the duty of the citizenry to continually monitor the various state actors as a measure of putting them in check.

“You must not pay the property rate, business income tax and market tolls and other such levies and go to sleep… ensure that the people responsible for turning the collected revenues to projects profitable to your community and the country as a whole are on the right track”, he stressed.

The apathy on the part of citizens over the years to effectively engage in the governance process had resulted in state actors misapplying, misappropriating or totally shirking their responsibilities towards the citizenry in terms of provision of social amenities.

The Executive Director therefore stressed the need for proper citizen understanding of the governance process and the need for active participation for mutual benefits, “and that is why we are working with about three assemblies to beef up citizen participation to demand accountability from duty bearers”.