Monday, August 30, 2010

MOVES TO GET MORE WOMEN TO CONTEST ASSEMBLY POLLS (PAGE 13, AUGUST 30, 2010)

THE Atebubu-Amantin District Assembly, in collaboration with the National Commission on Civic Education (NCCE), is to embark on a sensitisation programme at the community level to create awareness of the need to get more women elected as Assembly Members in the forthcoming District Assembly election.
Since the inception of the decentralisation concept, the Assembly has not had any woman elected as an Assembly Member in the district.
This time round there is the need to get women involved at the decision making level in the district, Mr Sanja Nanja, the District Chief Executive (DCE) for Atebubu-Amantin, stated.
In an interview just after an emergency meeting of the assembly at Atebubu in the Brong Ahafo Region, he noted that some non-governmental organisations were already working in some communities to get women to participate in decision making at the grassroots or local level of governance.
Mr Nanja urged assembly members who would not seek for re-election to look for suitable candidates to replace them, preferably women, to enable the assembly to have women as elected assembly members for the first time.
He said in order to deepen the decentralisation concept in the district, the Ministry of Local Government, Rural and Development was trying to align some electoral areas while others would be merged.
Mr Nanja added that the Unit Committee members would also be reduced from 15 to five to help strengthen the local structures so as to make the process more effective.
The Atebubu-Amantin DCE commended the Atebubu Traditional Council and the Urban Council for coming out with a proposal to reduce the cost of funeral celebration in the district.
The Member of Parliament (MP) for Atebubu-Amantin, Mr Emmanuel Owusu Mainoo, briefed the assembly on the government’s STX Housing deal and also on some of the government policies and programmes such as the free school uniforms and exercises books, the three years Senior High School (SHS) and the Savanna Agriculture Development Authority (SADA), of which the district was a beneficiary.
The Presiding Member of the Atebubu-Amantin Assembly, Mr Obeng Adams, expressed concern about bureaucracy in obtaining building permits from the district assembly.
This, he said, had led to unauthorised structures which had resulted in land disputes in the district and a fall in revenue mobilisation, thus affecting the assembly in its development efforts.
Mr Adams therefore suggested to the assembly members to take a second look at the period for securing building permits and, if possible, review the period from its present one month to between two to three weeks.

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