West Akyem Municipal Assembly owes over GHC 735,000

Asamankese, June 20. GNA- As at February this year, the indebtedness of the West Akyem Municipal Assembly in respect of projects certified for payment stood at GHC 543,040. This is in addition to an overdraft of GHC 201,000 taken from the National Investment Bank, the Municipal Chief Executive, Mr Seth Otchere, said in his maiden address to the assembly at Asamankese on Friday.

He said the debts would be serviced from the assembly's component of the 2009 Districts Assembly's Common Fund. Mr Okyere however, informed members that the exact figure for the assembly's indebtedness regarding projects could not exactly be quoted since certain jobs had been undertaken by various contractors without certification.

He said weighing the indebtedness against the common fund advice; the assembly would certainly find it very difficult to settle its debts within the year.

Mr Okyere said the reason for that assertion was not far fetched since the assembly expected to receive a gross sum of GHC 1,740,268,76p. "In real terms, however, the assembly would be receiving GHC 1,061,565,94p because of the statutory deductions that would not be spent directly by the assembly," he said.

In effect, the assembly would be left with an amount of GHC 326,523,5p to grapple with for the next one year or so given that the assembly's total indebte dness in terms of projects and overdraft was GHC 735,040,89p.

In making all those analyses, Mr Otchere said he had realized that it was the ripple effect of the Common Fund indebtedness that was affecting the assembly's internally generated capacity.

He said that whenever the common fund of an assembly was in arrears, it would be forced to always use its internally generated fund for capital expenditure which might not be visible to the people.

The MCE said the result was that, the assembly now owed a whooping amount of GHC 73,268,80p for vehicle repairs, utility services, commission collectors, allowance and many other current expenditure. He said that had led to drastic reduction in revenue generation and transport services, cut-offs in utility services and inability to meet certain basic administrative expenses like purchase of stationery and equipment for the day-to-day running of the office. Mr Otchere stressed the need to reverse the unfortunate development within the next one year in order to put the assembly's economy on good course.

Consequently, he had put in place certain administrative measures to increase revenue mobilization, reduce expenditure on fuel consumption and other current expenditure on unjustifiable allowances. He said it was gratifying to know that since the introduction of those measures, certain concrete achievements that included reduction in fuel bills and increase in revenue were being realized.