‘Low participation in assembly meetings hinders dev.’

Low participation in the implementation of projects and programmes at the Municipal and the District Assemblies (MDAs) level has been identified as one of the major obstacles bedeviling development in the country.

Mr Emmanuel Liedib, the Municipal Planning Officer of the Bolgatanga Municipal, said this during a town hall meeting organized by the Assembly at Sumbrungu, a suburb of the Municipality.

He said the canker was not limited to the Municipality alone but it was experienced in many communities nationwide.

He said many Assembly Members were unable to organize community meetings to solicit inputs of members on development concerns as the members often demanded that the Assembly members feed or give them snacks.

“The Assembly alone cannot execute projects and programmes efficiently and that is why we always create a platform like the town hall meetings to solicit your inputs and opinions and yet many of you refuse to participate actively. This negative practice ought to end to pave the way for accelerated development”, he told the participants.

Mr Liedib said the Assembly from January to November 2015, was able to mobilize an internal generated fund of GHC1,896,269.75 and also received GHC1,460,934.88 as the District Assembly’s Common Fund.

He said there has been the execution of projects including schools, health facilities, provision of boreholes, market structures, sanitation equipment, training and the support of women groups in basket weaving and sheanut processing.

On the challenges confronting the Municipality, Mr Liedib said these include: the poor road network in the Municipality, inadequate funds for the implementation of Annual Action Plans, inadequate adherence to building regulation and poor environmental sanitation among others.

Most of the participants were, however, unhappy that the Assembly spent GH¢ 123,209.00 in maintaining security in the Municipality and said such amount could have been used for a meaningful development project.