News:
July 21, 2025
As the John Dramani Mahama led administration has uncapped the common fund, undoing the capping done by the previous government led by Nana Akuffo-Addo, Cletus Dapilah Seidu, Member of Parliament for Jirapa has noted that the various Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs) have regained their glorious days where development would be decentralized and not centralized.
According to him MPs and Ghanaians are applauding president Maham for sending funds directly to the assemblies which was a promise given and has been fulfilled.
“In the 2025 budget, we said eighty (80) percent of the funds would be sent to MMDAs for them to do development that the people need.
Unlike those days where procurement of goods and services, and logistics are done in Accra and dump on them; when in fact, they do not need those things and MMDCEs are so happy to the extent that those who served as MMDCEs under the previous administration are not happy with the policy they were implementing when they were in government, he said in an interview with Ghanamps.com.
Again, when you speak to them they tell you the current MMDCEs would have the free hand to work because the Assemblies would be very active again. “I tell you the last eight years the Assemblies were almost dead; senior officers management and planning officers, directors, engineers – they did not feel like going to work because they had nothing to go and do because nothing was happening”.
But now they have released the first common fund to them, they are active and working, they are undergoing procurement to undertake contracts and all that, so every office is busy working; formerly nothing. They formerly go there to read papers, close and go home and there were days they did not go at all because there is nothing to do at the assemblies, he added.
He affirmed that the manner in which the previous administration denied the Assemblies of funds was one of their cardinal mistakes under the former Finance Minister Ken Ofori Atta, something they should not have done because development cannot be centralised to achieve the needed impact.
The decentralization concept was to send development to the people and if you centralise it, how were the Assemblies going to develop? They were paying lips service to development for the people and it reflected in the polls.
He contended that in some of the assemblies, it was difficult to see any fully complete CHPS compound, three-unit classroom block because sent to them were used for administrative purposes.
Kwaku Sakyi-Danso/Ghanamps.com