Business News of Monday, 26 January 2015
Source: Graphic Online
The Municipal Chief Executive of Ga South, Mr Jerry Akwei Thompson, has urged the Ga South Municipal Assembly (GASMA) to adopt innovative and pragmatic measures for the rapid development of the municipality.
In his view, relying solely on the government for development would not be the best, since the government did not have enough resources.
Responding to concerns raised at a stakeholders sensitisation and consultative workshop on street-naming and property addressing exercise organised by the assembly at Weija last Thursday, Mr Thompson pointed out that the municipality lacked a lot of infrastructural facilities such as roads, clinics, water and faced environmental and other challenges.
Mr Thompson said without such measures to complement government funding, the municipality would continue to lag behind in terms of development.
He also tasked the municipal planning authority to endeavour to put government funds to good use.
In his view, a lot of government funds were being spent on projects but they did not produce any intended outcome because they had no time values and benefits for residents.
He rather suggested that key development projects such as building of good roads could be tackled in phases and sustained year after year.
He further tasked chiefs in the municipality to be up and doing in meeting their social responsibility obligations instead of only being interested in selling lands. They should also show interest in the welfare of the people to whom they sell lands.
According to Mr Thompson, instead of the chiefs leasing the lands they sold them outright and when they leased them they did so on long-term basis spanning over 99 years without taking into consideration the long-term economic benefits of short lease.
‘’You should avoid multiple sale of lands which in most cases leads to tension, conflict and chaos and sometimes results in fatalities,’’ he said.
He pointed out that many of the problems in the municipality emanated from the attitude of some of the chiefs.
In a presentation, an official of the Town and Country Planning indicated that the assembly identified 2,000 streets within the municipality out of which two hundred had been named.
The assembly is in the process of validating the streets that have been given names.
According to the assembly, 75 primary schools were benefiting from the school feeding programme and the remaining six would be hooked to the programme soon.
In order to address the environmental challenges landfill sites were to be engineered for economic value such as the manufacture of cement and production of biogas.
The Municipal Urban Roads Engineer, Mr J. B. Quarcoo, who gave an overview of roads within the municipality, said only 45 kilometres out of the 745 kilometres of roads are paved.
He said the problem was the result of inadequate budget allocations for the roads in the area and said for instance that about GH¢ 445,000 was approved out of the GH¢1.545,179.00 proposed in the assembly’s budget.
He, however, said that a number of road projects were being executed to improve the road network in the area.
Mr Quarcoo admonished landlords who constructed high walls around their houses to sacrifice a few blocks for the construction of drains in their areas.
During an open forum, participants raised issues of the poor road network and the poor drainage systems in most of the communities and called on the assembly to do more to alleviate their plight before the onset of the rainy season.