Finance Ministry cautions MMDAs about ghost names

Bolgatanga, Oct. 11, GNA - The Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning has warned Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs) that the law would deal with them if they are found using the names of workers who are either dead or who have vacated their pots. Mr Joseph Antwi, Principal Economic Officer of the Ministry who gave the warning during the Regional launching of the Regional Composite Budget at Bolgatanga on Monday, noted that even though many employees of the Assemblies were either dead or had vacated their posts over the years, the Assemblies had failed to prompt the Ministry to withdraw such names from the pay roll.

"It is believed that some staffs of the Assemblies are secretly sharing these monies, and the law would deal with such persons when they are caught," he said, adding that District Chief Executives (DCEs) must show keen interest in composite budgeting instead of allowing everything to be done by the technocrats alone. Mr Antwi told the MMDAs that now that they were given the mandate to undertake their own Composite Budgeting, it was incumbent upon them to find out innovative strategies to increase their Internally Generated Funds(IGF). He also urged the Assemblies to take advantage of the Urban Development Fund to support their development programmes.

The Regional Minister, Mr Mark Woyongo who launched the function, indicated that with the implementation of the Single Spine Salary Structure, Government was already spending huge sums of money on the payment of salaries, and stressed that the 93ghost names" phenomenon must be stopped forthwith as it was not making the Government's burden any lighter.

The Regional Minister who expressed happiness about the introduction of Composite Budgeting, said political decentralization without economic decentralization was having an adverse effect on the effective implementation of the decentralization concept. "With the Composite Budget now we need not travel from Bolgatanga to Accra for budgetary approval before we can spend and this will bring about speedy and accelerated development", he said. The Regional Minister also explained that the decentralization of financial administration would also offer the people at the grassroots the opportunity to participate effectively in the decentralization process at the local Assembly level.

"People at the grassroots level can have a say in determining the priority areas when it comes to development and not allowing only MMDAs to impose development on them without seeking their views to determine what they want", he indicated.

Mr Woyongo challenged the Assemblies to improve upon the collection of property rates which was not being properly executed by many of the Assemblies and which affected their IGF negatively. Mr Edward Ayiriba Ayagle, Bolgatanga Municipal Chief Executive took the participants through what the Assembly had been able to achieve from 2009 to 2011, saying that it had implemented a lot development projects in the area of education, health and the road sector. He indicated that the Assembly was able to exceed its IGF targets in 2009, and 2010, and expressed the hope that it would exceed the target for 2011 as well.