Hand over completed projects for use …MMDAs admonished
Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs) have been admonished to hand over all completed projects for use by the intended user agencies and beneficiaries since there is no justification to hold on to them.
The beneficiary communities will continue to suffer the same conditions for which they are established with deteriorating standards of living if the projects after completion are not handed over to them for use.
A monitoring team of selected District Assemblies’ Common Fund (DACF) and District Assemblies Common Fund – Response Factor Grant (DACF-RFG) projects in 22 MMDAs in the Central Region revealed 26 completed projects across 14 districts are not in use for various reasons representing 25 per cent of all 103 completed projects out of 163 inspected.
The exercise revealed some of the completed projects are dormant, because they were either awaiting commissioning or supply of complementary facilities such as furniture, electrical and water connections.
Out of the 163 inspected projects, 77 were funded with DACF, the remaining being DACF-RFG projects, 57 under education sector, 40 belonged to health sector, 26 under governance with18 economic, five under water and sanitation, three for security and aside the 103 completed, 57 others were ongoing with three abandoned.
Other issues discovered by the exercise include both completed and ongoing projects, incomplete procurement processes, irregular site meeting and poor supervision.
Affected districts include Gomoa Central, Upper Denkyira East, Upper Denkyira West, Cape Coast, Agona West, Efutu, Agona East, Mfantseman, and Komenda- Edina-Eguafo-Abrem.
Presenting key findings at a dissemination workshop organised by the Central Regional Coordinating Council (CRCC), Bless Darkey, the Central Regional Budget Analyst, pointed out that while it might be politically expedient to commission the projects that did not form enough grounds to subject the people to continuous suffering and inconvenience.
He explained that current situation presented opportunity to be innovative and prudent in using limited resources to benefit communities were handed over to beneficiaries to ameliorate their plight adding that “when projects are completed ensure they are handed over as quickly as possible so that they can benefit the people.
“The Assemblies should ensure projects handed over are used because they have audit implications, basic planning demands critical elements such as human resource and logistics are procured simultaneously with execution of projects to make them immediately useful when completed,” Mr Darkey stressed.
Presenting findings of the monitoring exercise, Fred Nyame, Senior Planning Officer, RCC, noted that objective of the exercise was to monitor application of DACF and DACF-RFG for purpose of improving effective and efficient physical project implementation, inspect, ascertain first-hand information on project implementation and also extent to which completed projects had been put to use.
