The Gomoa East District Assembly is one of the most deprived districts in the Central Region but documents in possession of The New Crusading GUIDE has revealed that the assembly spent a whopping GHc82,000 on the funeral of its District Chief Executive, Isaac Kingsley Ehun-Armah who died last year.
Some of the challenges confronting the District include lack of clean water, lack of standard accessible roads, inability of parents to afford school fees, the common youth unemployment, the threat of teenage pregnancy, unfunded community sustenance and infrastructure projects, dusty rough roads and dilapidated housing structures.
Others include irregular flow of funds to purchase drugs for the Health Centre and to run the Education Directorate and the deplorable state of facilities of the only Vocational and Technical Training Institute located in Gomoa Panfokrom.
In the midst of all these rural predicaments, the Assembly could still spend an incredible GH¢81,996.00 out of its Internally Generated Fund and the Common Fund on its late DCE’s funeral who was buried in May last year.
Some of the expenditures included hiring of chairs and canopies (GH¢15,000.00), transportation cost of GH¢10,000.00 with food and drinks alone costing GH¢32,988.00.
The funeral ceremony was attended by District, Municipal and Metropolitan Chief Executives (MMDCEs) as well as some regional executives of the National Democratic Congress (NDC).
However, the total amount of revenue generated from property rates, lorry tolls, bar licenses, tickets, building permits and sand winning revenues by the Assembly’s was a paltry GH¢176,513.00 which means the Assembly spent more than half of its revenue on the funeral of its deceased DCE.
The GH¢81,966.00 was what was showed by the Assembly’s paid vouchers but sources indicate the extravagant amount is likely to go beyond GH¢100,000.00 if donations and other miscellaneous spending are properly accounted for through an independent audit.
“We are worried about this reckless expenditure by the Assembly and it would be proper that authorities there were sanctioned”, a source in Cape Coast indicated.
In the exercise of their political and administrative powers under Section 10 especially (b, c, d & e) of the Local Government Act 1993, Act 462, every District Assembly as part of its functions “Shall formulate and execute plans, programs and strategies for the effective mobilisation of the resources necessary for the overall development of the district” and one is tempted to ask if that particular expenditure was in the overall interest of the district.
Interestingly, the profligate spending has been justified by management of the Assembly on the grounds that 75% of the amount was budgeted for.
The question that remains unanswered is whether the funeral expenditure was presented as a main budget item and approved before the demise of the DCE or an acceptable unknown contingency item of the assembly’s budget in the previous year and approved by the Minister as required by Financial Memoranda and Local Government Act 1993, Act 462?
Section 87 (1&2) of Act 462 stipulates that“Subject to this Act, a District Assembly may incur the expenditure necessary for, or incidental to, the performance of a function conferred on it under this Act or any other enactment, or by the instrument by which it is established, where the expenditure is included in the approved budget of the District for the relevant year.
Subsequently, the moneys received by a District Assembly from the District Assemblies Common Fund shall be expended only on projects which form part of the approved development plan for the district.
It is hoped that the incident came to the attention of auditors in their 2015 audit. Subsequent issues have been documented in advance with reliable evidence but will be disclosed in subsequent series.
To what extent have public auditors over the years applied Section 122 of Act 462 will also come under scrutiny.
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