Davis Ansah Opoku, the Member of Parliament (MP) for Mpraeso Constituency in the Eastern Region, has implored Metropolitan Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs) to curb contracts and procurement breaches to enable them provide amenities to ameliorate the plight of communities.
He cautioned that “if the situation is not curbed communities will lack basic amenities to improve livelihoods of the people”.
Mr Opoku, the Deputy Ranking Member on the Public Accounts Committee (PAC), made the call in Parliament when the committee presented its findings to the House, and also asked the Local Government Services to employ and engage the services of legal practitioners at all MMDAs.
He intimated that they would assist and support them avoid such breaches and irregularities and help minimise such perennial issues of at the assemblies.
“During our engagements with the assemblies, it became clear that there is general lack of legal understanding in the assemblies on issues of contracts and procurements, a situation which has played a key role in numerous irregularities captured in the Auditor-General’s Report.
“We also realised that a number of the MMDAs, especially the newly-created MMDAs have little knowledge and skills about the nature of agreements entered on their behalf between the Ministry of Local Government and the Zoomlion Company Limited even though the committee met with Zoomlion.
“They gave us vivid explanations and we realised that they are even doing a bit of favour which it brings to bare the need for our local assemblies to have personnel who understand legal issues in order to minimise contract and procurement breaches so I think the time is now for the Ministry of Local Government or the Local Government Service to employ lawyers in all the assemblies.
“This will ensure that we do away with contract irregularities, procurement breaches, and store irregularities and even with the tax irregularities that we continue to find in the Auditor-Generals Report,” Mr Opoku entreated.