The Nkwanta-North District Assembly (NNDA) in the Oti Region, has embarked on stakeholder engagement to educate the people at Kpassa, the district capital, on the taxes and levies to be paid for the 2024 fiscal year.
The participants mainly traders, hairdressers, community based organisations, artisans, opinion leaders and heads of departments, were educated on the need for them to approve upward adjustments in levies and pay them regularly to help provide the needed funds for development.
Speaking at the programme, the Nkwanta- North District Coordinating Director (DCD), Mr Sevlo Adjei, said the Assembly decided to educate the stakeholders on the 2024 fee fixing, to ensure that they made relevant imputs to enable them to accept and freely pay taxes without hesitation.
Mr Adjei explained that the programme was in line with the Local Government Act of 2016 (Act 936), which mandated district assemblies to collect taxes to facilitate development.
According to him, it was important for the assembly to educate stakeholders to understand why the assembly should fix its fees for the coming year, and the need for the assembly to mobilise adequate resources to carry out development in the district.
Mr Adjei assured the residents that a similar education programme would be carried out in major communities before the year would end to ensure that the people would agree to pay taxes without any difficulty, to enable them to contribute meaningfully towards mobilisation of resources for development.
He said it was becoming increasingly clear that assemblies could no longer depend on the District Assembly Common Fund (DACF) to address the development needs of the people, therefore the assembly was making conscious efforts to improve on internally generated funds (IGF) for development.
The DCD continued that there was the need for residents in the area to adhere to safe environmental practices such as proper acquisition of land and building permits, to ensure effective layout of communities, and added that as the assembly tried to promote development, the environment should also be protected.
The District Budget Analyst (DBA), Mr Geoffrey Ahodor, educated the people on various rates at the assembly, and said the assembly proposed that those with their own sheds would pay GH¢4 in 2024 instead of the GH¢3 they paid in 2023, an increase of GH¢1.
Mr Ahodor also explained that traders who used sheds provided by the assembly would pay GH¢6 a day in 2024 as against the GH¢4 they paid in 2023, which was accepted by the stakeholders.
The stakeholders also appealed to the assembly to renovate the sheds at Kpassa market, which they described as in a deplorable condition to merit the increased fees in 2024.
FROM SAMUEL AGBEWODE, KPASSA
