Department under North Gonja District given GH¢20 as 2013 imprest


The Department of Community Development in the North Gonja District in the Northern Region received only GH¢20.00 as imprest to run the department for the 2013 fiscal year.

The department has so far not received any amount to run the administration for 2014, the District Director in charge of Community Development and Social Welfare Abubakari Abdul Rahman has revealed.

He made the disclosure when members of the Parliamentary Select Committee on Local Government and Rural Development visited the district.

The Parliamentary Select Committee on Local Government was in the district to interact with members of the assembly and other departments under the Local Government Ministry to see at first hand the challenges and progress they are making as part of their five days visit to some selected Districts in the Northern Region.

The Department of Community Development and Social Welfare in the District is in charge of organizing community sensitization durbars.

Mr. Abdul Rahman described the situation as frustrating.

He therefore appealed to the Parliamentary Select Committee to intervene and give the appropriate advice to the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development to recognize the importance of the activities of the district to increase budgetary allocation to them to enhance their work.

Abubakari Abdul Rahman said the meagre amount given to them to run their activities makes their work extremely difficult. Some of the communities are far apart and require the use of a motorbike to get there, he explained, adding that the amount is not even enough to fuel a motorbike.

Assistant Director in charge of Human Resource at the District Briamah Persah Joseph was worried about the poor road network in the district. He said teachers are unwilling to accept posting to the area due to the poor roads.

The district has a total of 9,790 pupils from Kindergarten to Junior High School with only 105 teachers, only 53 are trained, he said.

 ‘With this number of teachers, we have one teacher teaching from kindergarten to primary six in some schools and this has accounted for our poor performance in education in the district,’ he said.

District Chief Executive for North Gonja, Sorku Kasim Yahuza, told the committee that the District do not have office space, accommodation for its staff, district hospital and senior high school, and appealed to the committee to channel those problems to the appropriate quarters for assistance.

Chairman of the committee Dominic Azumah said there should not be discrimination in terms of monetary allocation to departments in the district and assured heads of the departments that the committee will invite officials of the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development to respond to concerns raised by the district before putting their report together.

‘I am sure the Ministry of Finance approved budgetary allocation for the sector ministry and someone there sat down and decided to send you that amount. I am shocked and I assure you that we will take it up and we might invite someone from the sector ministry… to explain to the committee before writing our final report to the President.’

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