According to him, the significant rise in the population of the large metropolitan assemblies in Accra and Kumasi, had put a lot of stress on resource allocation in those areas.

[contextly_sidebar id=”cY6C06gcfmEmzibUFfhqgajcnDApTDSv”]He believes that the creation of the new districts will reduce the pressure on the two assemblies and ensure that resources reach remote places which would otherwise have been ignored .

“ Kumasi and Accra are different in their own right. Accra is the capital city and the pressure on Accra is quite bigger and very huge as against that of the other assemblies. The same applies to Kumasi, because Kumasi shoulders the pressure from Northern Ghana, and it is a middle belt metropolitan assembly,” he said.

“So we need to reduce the pressure and make sure they can concentrate on developing Kumasi properly and its environs.”

He also said the revenue sources of Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA) and Kumasi Metropolitan Assembly( KMA), are such that they do not need the common fund.

He argued that cutting it away would allow other sub metropolitan areas, that may have met the population criteria either on the district or municipalities level, to assume that status, and have the common fund to start development from “the bottom up” to get to the level of the AMA and KMA in terms of development.

However,  he admitted that both areas still had unresolved issues with sanitation management.

“When you look at KMA and AMA, they may have been developed, they have developed up to a certain level except for waste management” he said.

He proclaimed that, if other areas are caved out, government can concentrate on their development,  which is the rationale behind elevating some metropolitan assembly into municipalities.

‘Deepen democracy and decentralisation’

A legislative instrument (LI) was laid in parliament on Thursday for the creation of 38 new districts across the country.

The LI, which will mature in the next 21 sitting days, seeks to also carve some municipalities from other assemblies, and also elevate some existing districts to municipality status.

Speaking to journalists after presenting the LI, the Local Government Minister, Hajia Alima Mahama, said the move is to deepen Ghana’s democratic processes as well as the decentralization system.

“We’ve decided that we need to deepen our democratic process and decentralization system. There are some districts that have grown. We started district assemblies in 1988, the population of some of the district assemblies have even doubled. And the essence of our local government system is to ensure that all persons in the district participate in the governance system and feel part of the governance system. So we’ve decided to increase the number of districts, the districts that are big, divide them into other districts,” she added.

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By: Farida Yusif/Citifmonline.com/Ghana

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