Over 90 percent of development projects initiated by the Pru District Assembly during the New Patriotic Party’s (NPP) regime have either been uncompleted and abondoned or were not started at all, the Pru District Chief Executive (DCE), r Masawud Mohammed, has said.

According to him, huge sumes of money were also paid to the contractors who were awarded these contracts and efforts by the assembly to get the contractors to complete or begin them had proved futile.

He disclosed this during the first assembly meeting . He mentioned some of the as school projects at the Abease area while work on the district assembly administration block has not started yet.

He mentioned that work on the new staff and district chief executive’s residences had stopped while the site for the proposed district jubilee school could not be traced.

Beside, Mr Mohammed said, the assembly also failed to contribute its 10 percent counterpart funding for the Development Partners Projects such as the Community Water and Sanitation Agency(CWSA), Social Investment Fund (SIF), and the Community Based Rural Development Project (CBRDP) but rather withdraw huge sums of money those donor funded accounts.

"We had the unpleasant duty to refund an amount of GH¢15,000 into the CBRDP accounts which was wrongly withdrawn and used for operational activities , before an additional grant of GH¢105,000 was approved to implement new projects for the year, "the DCE added.

Also, Mr Mohammed said, withdrawals were made from the Common Fund accounts. He gave the breakdown of the withdrawals as GH¢18,000.00 from the National Youth Employment Programme (NYEP), GH¢ 13,66.52 from the CBRDP, GH¢3,980.00 from the CWSA and GH¢7,000.00 from the M-SHAP accounts bringing the total to GH¢42,643.52

He said the assembly inherited a debt of GH¢1,175,920.02 (¢11.75billion) and gave the breakdown of the indebtedness as GH¢1,035,023.04 being outstanding balances on on-going projects, GH¢54,495.63 as outstanding balances on certificates of contractors not paid, GH¢42,643.52 as outstanding on borrowings from development partners accounts and GH¢43,757.53 as outstanding bills payable.

These debts notwithstanding, he said the assembly was committed to ensuring that work on all the ongoing projects was completed by the end of the  year.

He said some of the projects earmarked for completion before the end of the year were the new staff and DCE bungalows, two were three-unit classroom blocks with ancillary facilities at Ajaraja Beposo and the Yeji Methodist Primary School, a new district health insurance office complex, provision of security lights at the Yeji market and the facelift of the Yeji township and lorry park.

The DCE said under the CWSA project, Prang would benefit from the Small Town Water Supply System while 32 boreholes would also be constructed district-wide and about 12kilometres of the Yeji township roads would be tarred.

Mr Mohammed said the assembly would also formulate policies to manage solid and liquid waste in the district and clear garbage that was gradually swallowing the inhabitants up,which had made the district one of the filthiest in the country.

DS