Departments of the Assembly

With the enactment of the Local Government Act 1993, Act 462, there ought to have been eleven Departments (known as Decentralized Departments) established at the Assembly level but only eight (8). 

Apart from the Natural Resource Conservation Department, the rest of the Departments can be said to be established even though not all having the full complement of staff. The Departments are:

• Central Administration
• Education
• Health
• Finance
• Works 
• Agriculture
• Social Welfare and Community Development
• Disaster Prevention and Management

Other Public Institutions

The other Public Institutions not decentralized and operating in the District are:

1. Ghana Police Service
2. Bureau of National Investigations
3. National Commission for Civic Education
4. Electoral Commission
5. Ghana Meteorological Services Dept
6.  Ghana Postal Services
7.  Centre for National Culture

For all these departments and organization that are established in the district, they are constraint in terms of human resource and or logistics to carry-out their mandates.

Common Fund

The first and second quarters’ allocation of the Common Fund for this year have been received and the breakdown is as follows:

1st quarter Allocation    -   340,022.03
      Deduction              -    256,636.90
      Received               -    83,385.13

2nd quarter                 -    335,155.02
       Deduction            -     226,650.55
       Received             -    108,504.47

The deduction made on the Common Fund was huge as indicated above.

Ladies and Gentlemen it appears our budget on the Common Fund cannot always be followed religiously because there are so many deductions.

Demands usually come to distort our annual budget to an extent that it creates a lot of uneasiness regarding the use of the Fund. Perhaps we have to work at these issues closely when drawing  the next year’s budget.

Projects

A part from little payment to contractors, the Assembly has not been able to make major payments to contractors for projects that are on-going as result of the huge deductions on Common Fund.
 
Millennium Development Authority (MIDA)

The Advisory committee on the implementation of MIDA programme  has been inaugurated and the launching of the Agricultural component has been taken place in Nyankpala.

A Consultant had be contracted to trained the FBOs and the activities would begin very soon. The table below depicts the information:

Zone                     Non. of FBOs     Memembership           Total
Karaga Zone              11       330             220                        550
Yemo-Karaga               6       185             115                       300
Pishigu                       17      544             306                       850
Namburugu                   5       114             136                       250
Total                           39     1,173            777                      1,950

During the year the activities that were carried out were as follows:

1. Formation of fifty – five (55) FBBO with 3,000 farmers
2. Train 39 MIDA existing FBOs in Commercial Agriculture.
3. Construction of identified Schools, Roads and Dams 
4. Link FBOs for some of the farmers for credit and other service.
5. The consultant would begin the training of the FBOs in the various communities in the District.

Formation of District Election Security Task Force

Each District is required to form District Election Security Task Force. Karaga District Task Force has been formed and begun its work. The roles of the Task Force among others include organising meetings with Chiefs, Political party leaders, Opinion leaders on how to have a peaceful election in December this year. 
 
I wish to appealed to all Members to cooperation and give full support to the Task Force to accomplish its task of having peaceful election. 

Approval of Fee Fixing Resolution 

The Assembly in pursuance of section 95 of the local Government Act (Act 462) which mandates the  District Assemblies to generate local revenue for the purposed of enhancing development at the District level, the Karaga District Assembly has hereby resolved to collect the following fees and rates in its area of jurisdiction as by law applied for the 2009 financial year.

Accordingly, the Assembly presents the 2009 Fee Fixing Resolution for your study, consideration and approval which would be  to be presented to the General House at its next session.

Support to Farmer Groups

Following the approval to support farmer groups with loans for farming by this august house and was to be administered by Tisongmitaba Development Association (TIDA). The Assembly accordingly, released 15,000.00 and 8.000.00 during the first and second quarters receipts of the common fund respectively. The NGOs has submitted the returns on the utilization of the funds on only first quarter to the secretariat.