ASHANTI REGIONAL Minister, Mr. Eric Opoku has re-affirmed his commitment to uphold his primary objective to work with all relevant stakeholders in the region to promote peace, social and economic development to ensure that the region gets its fair share of the national cake.
He, therefore, called on all members of the Regional Co-ordinating Council (RCC) to contribute their quota to enable the RCC deliver on its mandate.
Addressing a meeting of the RCC in Kumasi yesterday, the Regional Minister indicated that he would always count on the support of everyone to succeed on his mandate of prosecuting the business of Government in the Region.
He announced that in line with Section 20 (1) of the Local Government Act 1993, Act 462, His Excellency the President has nominated 21 MMDCEs, 15 of who have been successfully confirmed and subsequently sworn into office to administer their respective districts, while four of them are due for confirmation, leaving three Assemblies yet to get persons nominated.
He advised the newly appointed MMDCEs not to waste any time in coming out with programmes and action plans to be implemented to improve the lives of the citizenry.
Hon. Opoku appealed to MMDAs which are yet to confirm the appointment of their MMDCEs to be guided by the urgent need for uninterrupted development of their respective areas and thereby, co-operate with the Regional Co-ordinating Council (RCC) in getting their nominees confirmed.
According to him, as part of measures aimed at strengthening the staffing position and improves the capacities of the various MMDAs, the government made fresh appointments to enable the Assemblies delivers efficient services to their constituents.
�To ensure effective utilization of resources made available to the Assemblies, it is important for MMDCEs to supervise their staff with the view to making them work in line with the laid down regulations of the public services�, he advised..
He entreated MMDCEs and Heads of Departments and Institutions, to monitor the performance of staff under them properly and pointed out that unnecessary absenteeism, frequent outages from duty posts during working hours, among others, undermined the output and performance of personnel.
He said Government in a bid to motivate public service workers is currently spending the chunk of tax revenue on emoluments of workers on its payroll and urged all to ensure the delivery of quality and effective services to justify such huge expenditures.
The Minister commended the Mayor of Kumasi Metropolitan Assembly for introducing a biometric system which checks reporting and closing times of staff of the administration, and expressed the hope that other Heads in the region would emulate the good example to enhance discipline and increase productivity.
He said, following the successes chalked in previous assessments and subsequent releases of funds to some 25 beneficiary MMDAs in the region, the District Development Fund (DDF) has become the single most-important source of funding to the MMDAs. He disclosed that aside the numerous physical projects being undertaken under the funds, a number of generic capacity building training workshops have been undertaken to build the capacities of a cross-section of staffs of the Assemblies.
He mentioned Capacity Building for newly recruited Administrative Officers; Planning Officers, Budget Officers, Human Resource Director and Internal Auditors and training on Assets Register and Contract Management, Orientation for staff of newly created districts in the region as some of the training programs captured under the DDF.
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