Juaboso District Chief Executive, Alexander Adu Quist, is appealing to the Common Fund Office to rescue an Assembly office complex that has remained unfinished for more than a decade.
He said the District lacks the financial muscle to complete the project on its own.
The Assembly complex, initiated during the administration of former President John Agyekum Kufuor, was intended to provide adequate office space and improve the working environment of the Juaboso District Assembly.
But years on, the facility remains incomplete, with the structure exposed to deterioration while the Assembly continues to grapple with inadequate office accommodation.
According to Mr Quist, the Assembly’s current financial allocation is simply not enough to complete the project.
“Looking at the guidelines, the legacy fund that is being given to us, we cannot even do 20% of it,” he said.
He revealed that the Assembly has consequently written to the Common Fund Office to consider the project as one of the special projects requiring additional central government support.
“We were requesting that they should come to our aid, so that we can get some central government inflows to be able to complete it,” he explained.
He added that officials from the Common Fund have visited the facility, where the Assembly demonstrated the extent of the challenge.
“Common Fund team also came, we took them there and showed them that this is beyond us, and we need additional assistance from them.”
Office space crunch
Beyond completing a long-abandoned project, Mr. Adu Quist says the need for the facility has become increasingly urgent as new offices and personnel are added to the Assembly.
He noted that some staff are currently housed in spaces that were not originally designed for office accommodation.
“We need more space, because more offices are coming on board. And now where we house them, some of them are not purposely for office accommodation.”
According to him, completing the complex would therefore not only solve the Assembly’s accommodation challenge but also improve administrative efficiency.
“Once we get a new facility which will have more space, it will be better for the efficient running of the day-to-day administration of the Assembly.”
‘We cannot complete it alone’
The DCE is also appealing for support on the grounds that the Assembly has already invested substantial resources into the project over the years.
He believes abandoning the facility indefinitely would undermine the value of the investment already made.
“We have already invested money in the project for many years. By looking at the strength of the Assembly, it will be very difficult to complete the said project alone,” he stated.
Mr. Adu Quist is therefore urging the Common Fund to provide additional financial assistance to enable the Assembly to complete the facility and put it to use.
“We are pleading that they should come to our aid so that we will be able to complete the project for it to be more beneficial to the district, since we have office space difficulty.” He appealed.
For the Juaboso District Assembly, completion of the Assembly complex is no longer simply about finishing an old construction project. It has become a question of providing the institutional space needed for the Assembly to function efficiently and serve a growing district.
By: Portia Cudjoe
