District Common Fund to support sanitation activities

THE District Assemblies Common Fund (DACF) has released GH¢70.2 million to support sanitation activities under the National Youth Employment Programme (NYEP) this year.
The NYEP is working in conjunction with Zoomlion and the money is expected to be paid to those employed under the NYEP.
The Administrator of the DACF, Mr Joshua Magnus Nicol, told the Daily Graphic in an interview that 170 districts would benefit from the amount.
According to Mr Nicol, the money was what would have been paid into the Poverty Alleviation Fund (PAF) but the persistent non-payment of moneys loaned to beneficiaries led to the scrapping of the fund.
Consequently, the money had since last year been channelled to support activities under the NYEP.
Touching on the Members of Parliament (MPs) Common Fund, the administrator said GH¢3.3 million had been released to the 230 MPs in the country for execution of their constituency projects for the first quarter of this year.
He further explained that GH¢4,827 was directly released to each MP in the first quarter to enable them to monitor and evaluate their projects.
Mr Nicol explained that moneys for evaluation and monitoring purposes were released to the MPs through the district assemblies but the mode of disbursement changed following differences which usually arose between MPs and district chief executives (DCEs) over the release of funds.
According to him, his outfit received numerous complaints from some MPs on the alleged deliberate delays by some DCEs to release those moneys.
“To avert conflicts between MPs and DCEs, government has decided to directly release those moneys to the MPs,” Mr Nicol pointed out.
He also disclosed that GH¢47.1 million was released to all the 170 metropolitan, municipal and district assemblies for the first quarter of this year for development projects.
Touching on the Regional Co-ordinating Councils (RCCs), he said they were given GH¢832,000 for monitoring and supervision of projects in the 170 districts.
Mr Nicol added that persons living with disabilities also benefited from a GH¢381,000 package for the first quarter of this year to support their programmes and activities.