PIX: Elliot Fosu Barnor, Asokwa Municipal Assembly Presiding Member addressing the media last Friday. With him are the other Assembly members.

Story:

Assembly Members at the Asokwa Municipality are asking the LocaL Government Ministry to reverse the decision to have a third party do the daily collection of revenue for their outfit.

Addressing the media after an emergency meeting last Friday, Presiding Member (MP) for the Assembly Elliot Fosu Barnor said the Assembly would resume the collection by itself in October.

This, he said would mean that they would be parting company with the Ghana Revenue Authority GRA) as well as its assign Digital City Solutions (DCS), the collection outfit.

“It is true that MMDAs through their respective Chief Executives committed our Assemblies to the GRA partnership by signing an MOU but this contract has not helped us so we will collect the revenue ourselves in October since the Local Government Law back us up to do that”, the PM stated.

Background:

The Presiding Member said in 2022, the Asokwa Assembly by itself was able to collect over GHC 1,060, 000.00 from January to July.

However, he noted that since the Digital City Solutions operating under the GRA took over this year, it had been able to collect and make available to the Assembly only 27,000.00 during same period.

This figure, the PM said was totally unacceptable and inadequate to help the Assembly carry out any meaningful development project or initiatives in the Asokwa Municipality.

“How can you in the third quarter of the year give us 27, 000.00 as our share of the revenue since January to this time when we by ourselves were collecting fivefold of this amount”, the PM quizzed.

Earlier Walk Out:

Earlier in the day, 18 members of the  Assembly asked the Municipal Chief Executive (MCE), Chief Akwannuasah Gyimah and the Municipal Coordinating Director (MCD), Samuel Owusu Mensah to excuse themselves from the meeting.

The Assembly Members argued that the two could not sit in a meeting that would amount to conflict of interests.

They noted the two had earlier signed the MOU between the Local Government and the GRA that mandated a third party to collect the revenue the Assembly was collecting by itself.

This, they mentioned made the MCE and MCD unfit to sit in the meeting called to discuss a new way to collect revenue that is due the Assembly.

Resolution:

Ending the meeting, the Assembly members passed a resolution to start the collection of revenue by itself from October.

Secondly they adopted the proposal by two members to set up a revenue task force at the Assembly to carry out the collection and pleaded with residents to take note and assist the staff when they come in the name of the Assembly to take taxes and tolls due it.

Story By Michael Ofosu-Afriyie,

Kumasi.