Team set up to help resource newly created districts

The Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development has set up a task team to work out modalities to resource the newly created district assemblies. Mr Joseph Yieleh-Chireh, sector Minister, said the Ministry had noted with concern the lack of infrastructure and logistics for the 60 new districts, 28 of which were created in 2004 and 32 in 2008. The Minister was responding to a question in Parliament on efforts being made to provide infrastructure for the new district assemblies without relying only on the Common Fund. Mr Yieleh-Chireh said the task team would consult with a wide variety of stakeholders and the private sector and then present a report before the end of the year to guide the Ministry on how to work on supporting the districts. In response to another question on when the Chief Owusu Sanitation area in the Bantama constituency would see a facelift, the Minister said the infrastructure within the vicinity of the sanitary site was used to provide public toilet services for households without home toilet facilities and refuse collection services for people within the area. "Currently, there are two toilet facilities at the site, one water closet and one bucket latrine, which has been earmarked for demolishing to be replaced with water closet." He said the Kumasi Metropolitan Assembly (KMA) had given approval to a request to construct a 20-seater water closet facility and a 10-compartment public bath house at the site. "Furthermore, the Chief Owusu Sanitation Site has also been earmarked for improvement including the construction of the shed concrete hard-shoulder and landscaping for effective solid waste management under the City-Wide Solid Waste Collection scheme, which was recently introduced by the KMA." Mr Aquinas Quansah, Member of Parliament for Mfantsiman West, asked about steps being taken to curb the rampant flooding of Yamoransa and its environs during every raining season. The Minister said the Mfantsiman Municipal Assembly commissioned the Hydrological Services Department to undertake some studies in the area and reports indicated that the flooding was mainly caused by a culvert constructed on the main drain along the Yamoransa/Kumasi highway that is too small to accommodate the discharge in the streams passing through the area. He said to solve the problem a drain and culvert were to be constructed at a cost of 378,822.00 and 9,290.00 Ghana cedis respectively. He said the budget was beyond the assembly and it had therefore been forwarded to the Ministry of Water Resources, Works and Housing for consideration.