Metropolitan, Municipal and District Chief Executives (MMDCEs) must
continually exercise oversight responsibilities on employees to assist
the government to weed out all “ghost names” from payrolls.
This would help control the wage bill and free up resources, which
could be used to improve the delivery of important local services.
Mr. Seth Terkper, the Minister of Finance, gave the advice in a
speech read on his behalf by the Upper West Regional Minister, Alhaji
Amidu Sulemana, during the 2016-2018 Regional Budget Hearings launched
in Wechiau in the Wa West District.
The Finance Minister noted that the Government was implementing a
number of measures to restrict the growth of the Wage Bill, including
decentralising the wage bill and aligning payrolls of Metropolitan,
Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs) to their compensation budget
in order to effectively monitor its implementation.
“It is for this reason that the Ministry sent a template to all MMDAs
to collect employee compensation data that will feed into the 2016
Compensation Budget,” he said.
Mr. Terkper said it was important that as they looked for areas of
improving revenue, MMDAs would have to step up their own revenue
mobilisation schemes to generate additional resources to improve local
level services and to reduce dependency on the Central Government.
“The huge potential in property rate collection remains untapped,
especially for most of our Metropolitan Assemblies and some of the big
towns in the Municipalities,” he pointed out.
“We constantly hear of so many property owners who are yet to pay any
rates to the Assemblies, because the assemblies have not approached
them to collect the rates,” he stated.
The Finance Minister stated that this must not be allowed to go on,
explaining that as they open up the budget formulation process, it was
necessary to discuss and find innovative ways to mobilise resources in
an equitable and efficient manner.
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