23 COMMUNITIES IN BONGO DECLARED ODF 15th December, 2017

District Chief Executive [DCE] for Bongo in the Upper East Region, Mr. Peter Ayinbisa Ayamga has disclosed that some 23 communities across the district have been declared Open-Defecation Free [ODF] within the year.

The DCE who made the disclosure in his address at the Assembly’s last mandatory General Assembly meeting for year 2017, added that this feat was achieved through the collaborative efforts of partners under the Community-led Total Sanitation [CLTS] intervention. In the details, he said 13 of the communities benefited under a UNICEF intervention while the remaining 10 were under a SPRING Ghana programme. They included …

Mr. Ayamga noted that the District dropped from its previous 59^th position on the District League Table [DLT] in 2016 to 104^th position in the 2017 gradings of the DLT which meant that the District didn’t do well in the area of sanitation among other indicators. This he observed  was not a record to be proud of and called on the Assembly members to continuously educate their people as well as lead them to keep their surroundings neat at all times while for its part, the Assembly will provide adequate toilet and other sanitary facilities for the communities.

On Internally Generated Funds [IGF], the DCE disclosed that when the 2017 Annual Estimates were approved at the beginning of the year, the Assembly projected to rake in 224,580.00 Ghana Cedis but revealed as at 30^th November, 2017, only 158,283.70 Ghana Cedis was realised. Though the this figure represented a 70.47 percentage of the projections, the DCE charged his technocrats to redouble their efforts in improving the IGF since that was the immediate source of revenues for the undertaking the routine administration and other important business in the district.

In the address, which was read for him by the Ag. District Coordinating Director, the DCE attributed the shortfall to the inaccessibility of some good revenue points, the non-payment of telecommunication masts fees and the refusal by the citizenry to pay up their property rates. He hinted that the Assembly had initiated some measures to recover all such payments due it.

On roads, he announced that the District in conjunction with the Feeder Roads Department, had started procurement processes for the award of some roads to be worked on.  These include the Bongo-Namoo road, Namoo-Zorkor, Yorigor-Gowrie-Vea, Balungu-Vea, Yorigor-Bogrigor, Adaboya-Apatanga and Kongo-Beo feeder roads. He hoped that full rehabilitation of these roads would improve travel time and also open up the road network for easy and quick transportation of farm produce to marketing centres in and outside the district.

Touching on agriculture, Mr. Ayamga disclosed that the district received 9,390 bags of NPK fertilizer, 4,420 bags of Sulphate of Amonia and 1,385 bags of Urea which have since been distributed to some registered farmers through meticulous screening by the Department of Agriculture. Meanwhile, 290 sachets of tamato and pepper seeds were also delivered to farmers across the district. He added that a total of 2,213 farmers including women, the youth and persons living with disabilities received the fertilizer and improved seeds.

Meanwhile the DCE’s address also dwelled on the district’s health sector where, he reported that Out-Patient Department [OPD] attendance dropped from 123,129 to 95,669 between 2016 and 2017 respectively. Explaining possible reasons for the decrease, he said people were either resorting to other forms of treatment outside the health institutions or their health status had improved drastically through the months.

Still on health, he observed thatwas an increasing trend of HIV-AIDS cases in the district. He disclosed for example that 3,193 persons were tested in 2016 and that, 114 of them turned positive while as at November, 2017, the health authorities tested 3,175 people and 93 of them were found to be positive. He therefore called for a strengthened sensitisation campaign by all stakeholders in order to nib the canker in the bud. 

However, there were two unsuccessful rounds of voting to elect a Presiding Member [PM] for the Assembly. The incumbent PM, Hon. Duke A. Anaba stood against Hon. Baba Timothy. On the first round ….