Jumah Fights Ex-Officio Membership

HON MAXWELL KOFI Jumah HON MAXWELL KOFI Jumah, Member of Parliament for Asokwa in the Ashanti Region has emphatically stated that the situation where MPs serve as ex-officio members of the Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies is something that has to be discouraged.

He explained that since MPs were too busy with other important responsibilities which made it extremely difficult for them to attend Assembly meetings, their membership to both the Assembly and the state as a whole was profitless.

The Asokwa MP made the statement when he spoke on a Kumasi-based radio station on Tuesday about how Municipal and District Assemblies could succeed in managing the economy under the National Democratic Congress (NDC).

Bringing his experience to bear on the issue, Mr. Jumah, former Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Kumasi Metropolitan Assembly (KMA), pointed out that one of the ways to move the country forward was for the various leaders to use their past experiences to support the economy without reading political meanings into it.

He pointed out that within the period he served at the KMA; he realized that without addressing the plight of the people within the Metropolis first, particularly traders and hawkers, there was nothing one could do to ensure that KMA succeeded in the execution of its agenda.

To Mr. Jumah, previous heads of the Assembly had faced serious challenges to succeed due to the controversial nature of issues which bordered on trying to satisfy the needs of all citizens in the Metropolis.

The Asokwa MP explained that based on the dicey nature of the issue, the Assembly needed to get people who could have enough time to contribute to the effective implementation of the Assembly's policies and not MPs who had limited time even for themselves.

Expressing his views on why the various decongestion exercises within the Metropolis did not impart positively on the socio-cultural fortunes of the people, he said it was because people had to transact businesses at places where they would get people to patronize their wares.

It was based on this that the Assemblies had failed to succeed with the various decongestion exercises embarked upon in recent times.

He said one thing the assemblies have to do is for the leaders to try their best to find alternative means to create markets where the hawkers and traders will get enough buyers to buy their wards.

According to him, if the authorities really want to succeed with their plans they have to change their strategies by first finding proper measures to address the plight of the traders before instituting measures to eject them from the streets and other unauthorised places.

“With this I am of the view that there will be a successful exercise this time around,” he said.

Touching on the contribution of Assembly Members during the time of meetings, he said due to problems that face all members of the assembly at their areas, they tend to fight for something beneficial to people of their areas without bordering much on the entire need of the Metropolis.

According to him, since the burden on Assembly members was too much for them, they had always been failing to offer the needed support that the Assembly needed for a successful implementation and added that such unfortunate issues should also be addressed for effective contribution of the Assembly members. From Stella Danso, Kumasi