The Member of Parliament for Okere, Daniel Nana Addo-Kenneth, has called for the amendment of the District Assemblies Common Fund (DACF) 1993, Act 455 to enable the Fund Administrator report directly to the Minister of Local Government and Chieftaincy and Religious Affairs.
This, he said, would facilitate effective supervision and disbursement of funds to the assemblies for developmental purposes.
“Currently the DACF Administrator does not report directly to the Local Government Minister, thereby making it difficult to effectively supervise disbursement of the funds to the assemblies, some of whom are not much endowed financially,” he elaborated.
“At one point, the DACF Administrator reports directly to the President and Parliament and this makes supervision difficult for the Local Government Minister,” he added.
Mr Addo-Kenneth, who made the call at a media briefing in Parliament, stated that some assembles are financially endowed with mineral deposits as such the distribution of the fund must be evenly distributed to ensure that the deprived communities get enough resources to pronate.
He called for review of the formula for the distribution of funds to enable more funds to be allocated to urban and peri-urban centres for development.
He further expressed concerns over deductions from the funds at source by the Administrator for procurement, thereby leaving negligible amounts for the assemblies for development and said such practice must stop.
Touching on ways to improve tourism revenue, Mr Addo-Kenneth underscored the need for public sensitisation to whip-up interest in domestic tourism to rake-in more income for the development of the local economies.
He suggested public-private partnership arrangement to develop the country’s tourist sites in order to attract more tourists. —GNA
BY LAWRENCE VOMAFA-AKPALU.
