MPs divided over Constituency Dev. Fund

By Ebenezer Hanson

The creation of the Member of Parliament Constituency Development Fund, announced by President John Evans Atta-Mills in his maiden Message on the State of Nation last Thursday, has elicited sharply divergent views from Members of Parliament (MPs). While some hail it heartily as welcome news others dismiss it as superfluous because it will rather reinforce the wrong impression that MPs are development agents.

The President says the Fund; one of the novelty policy measures of the NDC administration under the broad theme of good governance will replace the MP’s Share of the District Assembly Common Fund (DACF) that has become a source of tension between some District Chief Executives and MPs.

However, a Minister of State at the Finance Ministry in the New Patriotic Party (NPP) regime, Dr. Anthony Akoto Osei, does not share the view of the President. He reasons that MPs already have a share of HIPC, GETfund and DACF and adding an MP Constituency Development Fund goes to augment the misconception that MPs are development agents.

“Already some constituents are in the habit of making incessant demands on MPs and with the coming into being of this development fund, it will end up pitting the constituents against MPs,” he explains to the Public Agenda in an exclusive interview in Parliament last Friday.

He says he agrees with the President that sometimes the MP’s share of the Common Fund do generate tensions between some MPs and DCEs but I am against the principle that MP is a development agent.

Dr. Osei, who is also MP for Old Tafo, wondered what would be the source of the development fund “Will it come from new taxes or what?”

To Hon. Paul Collins Appiah Ofori, MP for Asikuma/Odoben/Brakwa, the Fund will be superfluous as such, a creation already exists. “What the President wants to create is already in existence”.

The practice now, he expatiates, is that an account is opened in each district assembly into which a portion of the DACF remitted to each district is credited to an account known as the MP Constituency Development Fund and used by the MP for minor projects. The signatories to the account are the District Co-ordinating Director and the District Finance Officer.

“MPs do not sign cheques to draw money from the account for any project. What MPs do is that they identify projects they want to finance and direct the DCEs to release the funds to pay for such projects after execution. Therefore, what the President announced was implying was that the MPs will operate such funds to the exclusion of DCEs whom the President says stand in the way of MPs for development projects.”

The Financial Administration Act 2003, Hon. Appiah-Ofori pointed out, does not allow those not authorized to sign cheques to draw from any public bank accounts. “So if such an account is established it will in law form
part of the accounts whose operation shall be under the District Co-ordinating Director and the District Finance Officer, so at the end of the day the obstacles which the MPs go through in accessing the development funds will still remain unchanged ”.

Thus while it is laudable to establish a development fund for MPs, he thinks the President can achieve his purpose of he prevails on DCEs he is about to appoint “not to put obstruct the MPs in the utilization of the Fund; anything short of that he will not achieve his objective”.

Hon. Alfred Agbesi, MP for Ashiaman, belongs to the school of thought, which concurs with the President. Nevertheless, he concedes, “strictly, MPs are not development agents but society has imposed that duty on us the MPs”.

He observes that it is curious that although district assemblies are given so much for development society does not talk about it “but the little that comes to the MPs has always been a subject of disagreement”.

Hon Agbesi welcomes the move by the President and believes that if the Fund comes to the MP directly he will be in a position to initiate and execute projects without reference to the Chief Executive of the district assembly thereby removing the conflict between the MPs and DCEs.





Like Hon. Agbesi, Hon. Inusah Abdulai B. Fuseini, MP for Tamale shares the sentiments of the President. He says that the root of the conflict is largely “jurisdictional considerations”. He explains that the MP’s share of the Common Fund is paid into an account held by the district assembly to which the DCE is a signatory.

“And by reason of that arrangement the CEO of the district interprets that to mean that he has supervisory jurisdiction over the use of the money, hence the conflict”.

In 2007 when the legality or otherwise of the MP’s share of the Common Fund came up at Public Agenda’s forum on decentralization , Mr.Freddie Blay, former MP for Ellembelle explained that the deduction of sixty percent from the reserved fund of the District Assemblies Common Fund (DACF) for Members of Parliament (MPs) is part of efforts at promoting good governance.

“If the district assemblies receive about 8 billion cedis each year out of which MPs take 200 million cedis what do they want the government to do?

Mr. Blay argues that given that MPs are also seen as agents of development, it will be quite difficult for anybody to call for the abolishment of the fund since most of them depend on it for survival in the hot political terrain.

Blay dismissed claims by some DCEs that MPs are not agents of development and should concentrate on their law making functions while the building of infrastructure at the district is left for the District Assemblies.

“MPs are developing against in their constituency and use the DACF for the development of their constituencies and not for any thing else. MPs have a crucial role to play in the developmental agenda of the nation,” he said.

Hon. Blay disagreed with the suggestion saying that the MPs are using the funds to execute projects that are equally important to the people.