To enhance transparency and responsiveness in the management and utilisation of internally generated funds (IGF) and the District Assembly Common Fund of the Dormaa Central Municipal Assembly, Dormaa-Ahenkro-based Gift FM, in collaboration with its allied partners, Global Media Foundation and Human Care and Maintenance Foundation, has implemented a project to monitor the Assembly.

The 14-month project titled "Local FM and Civil Society Organisation promoting revenue management and its utilisation for development," which has taken-off, is under the sponsorship of Star-Ghana, a multi-donor agency, with funding from EU, DANIDA, UKaid and USAID.

The Project Co-ordinator, Victor Fosu Boamah, announced this at a training workshop for research assistants at Dormaa Ahenkro, in the Brong-Ahafo Region.

Mr. Fosu Boamah explained that the $50,000 project would take place in 12 communities within the municipality.

Some of the beneficiary communities are Dormaa-Ahenkro, Amasu, Sukora, Danyame, Asenso Number Two, Atesikrom and Nsuhia.

The rest are Kosane, Aboabo Number Four, Kokorasua, Asikasu Number Two, and Asikasu Number One.

Mr. Boamah said, under the project, a baseline survey would be conducted on revenue mobilisation and utilisation in the areas.

This, according to him, would enable the project’s team to generate evidence for advocacy on the need for the assembly to be more transparent and accountable to the local people, to enable them generate more revenue needed for development.

Facilitating the training, an anti-corruption crusader and the Chief Executive Officer of Global Media Foundation (GLOMEF), Raphael Godlove Ahenu, emphasised that MMDAs could strengthen and improve on their revenue mobilisation if the local people were told what their taxes are used for.

According to him, tax payment was an obligated responsibility of all citizens, and that it behoved on MMDAs to also ensure that taxes paid are utilised for development purposes.

He noted that because MMDAs had failed to be accountable to the local people, they sometimes found it difficult to collect taxes, because people were always reluctant to pay.

Another facilitator, Collins Osei, was with view that the government’s effort of ensuring sustainable development would be a mirage if the MMDAs continued to exclude the majority of the citizens from participating in medium-term development plans and budget preparations.

He said the project would improve civil society organisations and media knowledge on revenue generation, to enable them demand proper utilisation of the limited resources of the Assembly.

The Director of Gift FM, Francis Boahen, was positive that the project implementing communities would cooperate to achieve the desired outcome.

He said the project would enhance the capabilities of the citizens to engage the assembly in budget planning and tracking.

Chronicle