Ms Josephine Nkrumah, Chairperson, NCCE
The National Commission for Civic Education (NCCE) has asked landlords and estate developers to promptly honour their obligations to facilitate development in their areas.
It noted that payment of taxes and honouring other obligations will aid the speedy provision of social amenities and other development projects in their communities to enhance their standards of living.
Judith Adomako-Ofosua, the Mfantseman Municipal Director of the Commission gave the advice at a town hall meeting organised by the Anomabo Parish Justice for Peace Committee (PJPC) in collaboration with the Municipal Assembly at Anomabo-Taido.
She underscored that lack of good property rate collection system was hampering the efforts of the assemblies to rake in more domestic revenue to finance its development agenda.
According to her, many homeowners and developers complained about the lack of social amenities, yet they failed to pay their property rates and other taxes from which money was generated to provide the amenities.
“The construction of roads, markets, schools and police stations depend on revenue generation, it is only through the collection of rates and taxes that such provisions can be made and the constitution enjoined metropolitan, municipal district assemblies to mobilise revenue through sources such as property tax collection.
“The exercise is slow due to insufficient valuation capacity, obsolete valuation lists, inadequate and unskilled staff resulting in weak enforcement as property owners have either refused to pay or deferred payments for years.
“There should be operationalisation of town and area councils which form critical part of governance structure to bring democracy to the doorstep of local communities, aid collection of levies, retain some percentage of revenues for running of office and other mandatory activities while rendering account to the assembly.”
Stephen Asante, a homeowner said he had never paid the tax because the authorities had not educated them on how to pay and where to pay. -GNA
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