James Gunu, Fmr DCE, Akatsi North.
"You are the Salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltines, how can it be made salty ? again it is no longer good for anything, except to throw out and trampled underfoot.
You are the light of the world. A town on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it on a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your father in heaven" Mathew 5:13-16 NIV.
The Salt and light contents of Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies are been taken away by central government thereby making them useless.
I wonder how many Ghanaians are have benefited or are currently benefiting "Salt and Light" from their various assemblies.
It's very important to note that, when assemblies deliver effectively and efficiently, the citizenry will then feel their good deeds and glorify God and central government for that matter.
When central government hijack, dominate, enfluence and control the political, administrative and fiscal powers of the district assemblies, it renders them useless. And at the end of the day, impact is not felt by the citizenry and they unable to glorify their father (MMDCE) they see every day let alone their father in heaven (President).
Sometimes central government doubt capacities of the assemblies and instead of building or strengthening their capacities and the structures they try to short cut development forgetting that, development is a process and some short cuts can be dangerous and very devastating.
Some existing MMDAs must be put under intensive care with life support whiles the newly created ones are housed in incubators so they can survived.
The assemblies must also be creative and innovative in their internally generated funds which the surest way of immunizing themselves against the central government imposed pandemic.
There is no public sector development authority better than the district assemblies if properly structured.
The assemblies are supposed to be development agents and authorities at the lower level of our local governance and decentralization drive.
The 1992 Constitution and the local governance act of 2016, act 936 appreciate the important roles of the district assemblies in the country's development agenda.
It is therefore, worrying that, today, the districts do not have any control over their own Common Fund established under article 252 of the 1992 constitution.
Central Government has now decided that, only twenty percent of the DACF goes to the district assemblies for development. The rest with strong and strange central government control is going into other unstructured areas such as the NABCOP, Planting for Food and Job programs.
I wonder how much "salt and light" district assemblies can provide out of the twenty percent District Assemblies Common Fund.