Nii Boye Laryea
The Okaikoi North Municipal Assembly (ONMA) has a shopping
mall project on its to-do-list modalities for which the Municipal Chief
Executive (MCE) Nii Boye Laryea aka Nii Aniya says have been decided upon.
The Private, Public Partnership (PPP) module to be applied
for the project, the MCE said, is in tandem with law.
Speaking to the DAILY GUIDE last weekend he hinted
that the shopping mall when completed would be named after the National Chief
Imam; the cleric’s residence is within the municipality.
The shopping mall project will be undertaken through the
collaboration of the Ministry of Local Government And Rural Development and the
ONMA. It would be expected to among other things boost the socio-economic
development of the municipality; the ultimate revenue generation being a
critical factor also.
Being a new municipality and created within an area with
dearth of land, the municipal assembly, he said is currently without its full
complement of departments. The education department for instance he said is
vast for which reason an attached building to the current site housing of the
assembly was rented and awaiting renovation.
The current location housing the headquarters of the ONMA was
hired and renovated; he said, explaining that ‘we were occupying a place not
convenient at all for office work until we acquired this place.’
The ONMA encompasses two constituencies Okaikwei North
constituency and Okaikwei Central and extends to Achimota he said, adding that
the AMA has three constituencies. Abeka being the headquarters of the ONMA
poses peculiar challenges; ‘Achimota is endowed with land for the needed
development of the office accommodation but moving the capital to that location
can address the land dearth issue. That would however require an alteration to
the Legislative Instrument (LI) instituting the municipal assembly with its
capital in Abeka.’
Continuing he said ‘offices for the immigration unit,
ambulance and others are unavailable and efforts to identify and rent shelters
for these to function have not yielded any fruit, with property owners not
enthused about doing so. We need to construct structures for courts in the
municipality but this is yet to be done.’
He is optimistic however, that things would pan out well. The ONMA was established by LI 2307 in 2017 under the Local Governance Act 2016, Act 936.
By A.R. Gomda
