SIMPLIFY ISSUANCE OF PERMIT (PAGE 3)

NII Armah Ashitey, the Greater Accra Regional Minister, has called for the simplification of issuance of building permits to reduce corruption.
He alleged that the state lost GH¢300,000 (¢3 billion old cedis) through under-invoicing of building permits perpetrated by a head of department of a municipal assembly in the Greater Accra Region.
The officer, whose name is being withheld, is under investigation for allegedly issuing a building permit of ¢2 billion instead of ¢5 billion for 17 storey buildings in his municipality.
Mr Ashitey made the allegation at the first ordinary session of the Ga West Municipal Assembly last Friday.
He said the restructuring of the issuance of building permits to make the process simple would eliminate corruption and encourage more people to apply for building permits thereby reducing unauthorised structures.
The Regional Minister noted that the three months land developers had to wait to obtain approval for building permits was not good enough and explained that it should be possible for prospective developers to obtain the permits within, at most, a month.
He advised staff of assemblies in the region to desist from conniving with developers to build unauthorised structures and cautioned that those caught would be sanctioned.
He said there was a lot of revenue generating items such as property rate, development permits, fees and fines and a host of others that the assemblies could rely on to generate the required revenue.
Mr Ashitey, therefore, urged the assemblies in the region not to rely only on the District Assemblies Common Fund but evolve innovative strategies to generate enough revenue for development.
The Municipal Chief Executive for Ga West, Mr Armah Tachie, said as of June, this year, the assembly had collected GH¢332,054.61 out of a projected revenue of GH¢1,067,647.50 representing 31.1 per cent of the total budget for 2009.
He said within the same period last year the assembly realised GH¢373,589.87 out of the projected revenue of GH¢1,270,163.00 representing 29.41 per cent of the total projection.
He said the assembly had put in place a number of long-term measures to improve revenue mobilisation for next year and into the future.
Mr Tachie said the measures included the completion of the collection of data on all properties and businesses operating within the municipality and the revaluation of all properties would be completed by the end of the year to ensure realistic budget for the ensuing year.