The Wa East District, one of the poorest districts in Ghana, is now progressing steadily in its development efforts with prudent utilization of its share of the Common Fund and other funding from development partners.
The assembly received 196,133.40 Ghana cedis as its share of the 2013 fourth quarter allocation which had been used on approved projects and programmes contained in the 2014 annual budget and action plan.
It has also taken measures that include building a database of all retable items district wide, re-enforcement of cattle rate task force, introduction of stickers, recruiting and training of 18 revenue collectors and supervision of revenue collectors to reduce corrupt practices and improve its internal generated effort.
Mr. Abdul Karim Abudu, Wa East District Chief Executive, said this at the second ordinary meeting of the assembly held at Funsi on Wednesday.
He said the assembly had mobilized 230,496.47 Ghana cedis from January to June compared to its projected annual estimate of 128,552.00 Ghana cedis, representing an achievement of 179.3 per cent of the estimated figure.
He said even though the assembly had put up many projects such as education, rural electrification, health facilities and sponsorship for students there were still several development challenges facing the assembly.
He said with collective efforts of the people, especially the traditional rulers and development partners, a lot would be achieved.
Mr. Abudu said while the assembly had concentrated in putting measures to enhance development, armed robbers had taken advantage of the remoteness of the district to intensify their activities and this had become a source of worry to the people.
He said the police in the district were faced with the challenge of strong patrol vehicles to ward off criminals, especially highway robbers, which had become rampant among other criminal activities.
Dr. Musiebu Mohammed Alfa, Deputy Upper West Regional Minister, commended the assembly for its development achievement and urged it to do more on feeder and link roads to open up the communities.
He appealed to other development partners to emulate Plan Ghana, UNICEF and World Bank in partnering the Wa East District Assembly to ?put smiles on the faces of the people, especially women and children who are vulnerable?.
The Deputy Regional Minister said the Regional Coordinating Council was aware that some government workers were still staying and commuting to Funsi on daily basis to carry out official businesses and called for a stop to the practice since it contributed negatively to the development of the district.
Dr. Alfa also expressed worry about inadequate trained teachers in the classrooms in the district while also assigning absenteeism and poor supervision on the part of education authorities among others as contributing to poor performance at the Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) in the district.
He appealed to the assembly to consider sponsoring more students to training colleges and other tertiary training institutions to come out and serve the district.
GNA
