Bill on 3 devt authorities goes to Parliament

The Ministry of Special Initiatives will soon table before Parliament, a bill to set up the three development authorities that will supervise the disbursement of the one million dollar for each constituency for development.

The bill that will establish the three authorities which are the Northern Development Authority, the Coastal Belt Development Authority, and the Middle Belt Development Authority is expected to be tabled before Parliament by the end of June, this year.

The Northern Development Authority will take care of the three northern regions; the Middle-Belt Development Authority, for the Brong Ahafo, Ashanti, and Eastern regions; and the Coastal Development Authority for the four coastal regions.

The Minister for Special Initiatives, Mrs Hawa Koomson, told the GRAPHIC BUSINESS on the sidelines of a stakeholder forum which was organised by SADA, that the bill was currently at the drafting stage and would soon be tabled before Cabinet and subsequently to Parliament for approval.

“We actually don’t want to do the disbursement of the one million to each constituency in addition to what the district assemblies are going to receive and also see to it that the implementation of this initiative will be very quick and avoid the bureaucracy. This is why we are creating these development authorities so that we can fast track the projects that the one million will be used for,” she stated.

“These authorities will, therefore, be in charge of implementing the infrastructure programmes under the ministry,” she added.

She said the three authorities would, however, report to the ministry which would in turn report to the Office of the President.

Priority projects

Mrs Koomson pointed out that, the one million which would be disbursed to the constituencies would be used to finance government’s priority projects in the constituencies which include the water for all project, the one-district, one-factory, the one-village, one-dam, and the building of ware houses for the Planting for Food and Jobs programme.

“Basically these are government priorities and the rest will be coming from the constituency because we are implementing the whole programme from a bottom up approach and that is why we will be going to the constituencies for the needs assessment and the rest of the funds will be used to implement their needs,” she mentioned.

“It’s going to be a 60:40 ratio, with 60 per cent of the money funding government priorities and the remaining 40 per cent funding the needs of the constituency,” he added.

Restructuring SADA

The minister also pointed out that government’s priority projects in the constituencies would fit perfectly into the agenda of the Savannah Accelerated Development Authority as an agency under the ministry.

She said the ministry would, however, restructure SADA into a Northern Development Authority, which would supervise government’s projects in the three northern regions.

With 57 constituencies making up the three northern regions, the Northern Development Authority will, therefore, handle US$57 million for the three northern regions to deal with their infrastructure problems. — GB