It has been revealed that the District Chief Executive (DCE) for Bongo personally benefits from contracts awarded by the district assembly.
An Assembly Member for the Balungo Electoral Area and Aspiring Presiding Member of the Bongo District Assembly, Edward Asekere, who spoke in an interview on Breakfast News on Dreamz FM, disclosed that the DCE has a 10 percent in contracts the assembly awards for the undertaking of developmental projects.
Mr. Sekere made this revelation while detailing the events that led to the chaos at the first session of the assembly’s meeting on Tuesday, July 12, 2022.
The assembly had convened to, among others, elect a Presiding Member (PM) to replace the ongoing one whose tenure of office has expired.
The meeting, however, turned chaotic, stalling the business of the assembly after the DCE, Rita Atanga announced that she had revoked the appointment of the government’s appointed members and was replacing them with new appointees.
The disappointed members, who had turned up for the meeting, argued that the DCE did not follow due process in revoking their appointments and insisted that they were not going to stand down for the new members.
Describing the revocation of their appointments as unfair, they resorted to banging tables and destroying properties of the assembly in protest against the action of the DCE.
It took the intervention of the police to calm situations for the newly appointed members to be sworn-in. However, the assembly could not proceed with the election of the Presiding Member and had to adjourn the meeting.
Speaking on the matter, Mr. Sekere, who was hopeful of the elections coming off in a later date, said it would be in the interest of the DCE to ensure that the issues are resolved and the election of the Presiding Member.
According to him, apart from the fact that activities of the assembly and the development of the district will be grounded without a Presiding Member, the DCE stands to lose a lot if the elections of the PM is delayed as she will not be able to award contracts in order to have her share of 10 percent of each contract’s sum.
“The DCE stands to lose more if we don’t have a presiding member. In fact, if we don’t have a presiding member, there is what we call District Performance Assessment Tool; they come to look at your health issues, educational background and so many things and if you get a good mark, you are given a chunk of money for development projects. Without the presiding member, you will not even have the chance to be assessed so the DCE will lose her personal benefits because projects will come, she is able to award projects and even get her 10 percent from those projects.
So apart from benefitting personally, the district as a whole stands to benefit. So she is going to lose more and the district as a whole will also lose without a presiding member. Previously, we could select one of us to preside over meetings but there was a Supreme Court’s ruling in 2016 that said nobody can preside apart from the PM. So without the PM, the assembly cannot hold meetings and that is going to be dangerous for our district and any other district that does not have a Presiding Member,” he told Sarah Babohimah Teni.
