The Upper East Regional Minister, Mr Mark Woyongo, has challenged the municipal and district assemblies in the region to increase their revenue mobilization to speed up development. The minister said this when he called on the Regional House of Chiefs as part of his familiarization visit to departments and agencies in the region.
He urged the assemblies to ensure that they adopted effective means to block all leakages in order to generate enough revenue to augment what the central government sent as common fund. He said; "There is lots of revenue sitting outside there which are being invaded by organizations and individuals," and urged the assemblies to double their efforts to meet their revenue targets.
The minister assured them that they could exceed their targets if they effectively mobilized revenue from all traders and property owners and also avoided misappropriations. Mr Woyongo urged the assemblies to pay attention to sanitation issues by effectively implementing bye-laws to deal with people who violated sanitation laws. He said offenders should be prosecuted to serve as deterrent to others, emphasizing that it was one of the best ways of addressing sanitation problems.
Mr Woyongo asked the assemblies to embark on public education and sensitization programmes to deal with the sanitation problems. He said as civil servants they needed to remain neutral and loyal to all governments that came into power and not to be seen actively involved in politics. Mr Woyongo appealed to the workers to exercise restraint on their salaries whilst government worked to implement the single spine salary structure.
He stressed the need for the Regional House of Chiefs to come out with pragmatic strategies to help compliment government�s effort in addressing the Bawku conflict for peace to prevail. Mr Woyongo, who visited the Regional Directorate of Health Services, pledged to assist the Regional Hospital by helping in training health workers in outreach programmes. He said he had directed all the district assemblies in the region to sponsor people who would be pursuing medicine at the tertiary level. The Deputy Director of Health Services, Dr James Akpablie, said some of the problems confronting the directorate included lack of accommodation and doctors. He said the Regional Hospital had only one Dentist and one Gynaecologist.
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