Political and Administrative Structure

Awutu Senya East Municipal Assembly is made up of 1 Urban Council namely Senya, 5 Area Councils which are Bawjiase, Jei-Krodua, Awutu Bereku, Bontrase and Obrachire. It has 25 elected and 11 appointed members. There is a Member of Parliament and District Chief Executive (DCE) bringing the total number to 37. Currently, 10 out of the 11 decentralised departments have been established at the District level.

The Assembly is empowered with legislative, deliberative and executive functions within the district. There is a Presiding Member who is elected from the Assembly Members and chairs all Assembly meetings and the Public Relations and Complaints committee (PRCC)

The Assembly has five statutory sub- committees namely; Justice and Security, Development Planning, Works, Social Services and Finance and Administration. There is an Executive Committee which reviews the work of the sub-committees before the General Assembly meeting. The Executive Committee, which is made up of the chairpersons of the various sub-committees is chaired by the District Chief Executive.

The Municipal Assembly has secretariat that administer the day to day work of the Assembly. The secretariat is largely manned by bureaucrats and technical officers who perform various specified and interrelated roles aimed at achieving the mission and vision of the District Assembly. The Municipality Chief Executive is the head of the secretariat with support from the head of the bureaucrats the District Co-ordinating Director (DCD).

Below is the structure of the Departmental structure and the Local Government System from Regional to the Municipal Assembly level:

Departments of the Assembly

Legislative Instrument (LI) 1961 establishes eleven Departments of the Assembly. Currently ten (10) of the Departments are stationed in the District and functioning with some units. The Natural Resource Conservation Department is only department that has no unit in the Municipality operating on behalf of the Department. However, the Winneba office is supposed to have oversight responsibility over the Municipality.

The Departments established are:

 i. Central Administration
 ii. Education, Youth and Sports
iii. Ghana Health Service
 iv. Finance
v. Works
vi. Social Welfare and Community Development
 vii. Physical Planning
viii. Disaster Prevention and Management
ix. Agriculture
x. Trade & Industry

Other Decentralized Public Institutions

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

i. Ghana Police Service
 ii. Judicial Service
iii. Prisons Service
 iv. Bureau of National Investigations
 v. National Commission for Civic Education
vi. Ghana Postal Services
vii. Ghana Water Company Limited (though in Budumburam but with oversight responsibility over the District)
viii. Electricity Company of Ghana
 ix. Electoral Commission
x. Centre for National Culture

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

Non-Governmental Organizations in the Municipality

The following Non-Governmental Organizations, Civil Society Organizations and Community Based Organizations are operating in the District:

Table 3: NGOs operating in the District

District Map as captured in National, Regional and District Contexts

The Maps below shows the Municipality in the National Context, Regional Context and the Map of the District after the separation from the Awutu Senya East Municipal Assembly.

Figure 3
 

Figure 4
 

Figure 5: Awutu Senya District Map

Source: District PPD, 2016