Mr Drissa Ouattara, the Municipal Chief Executive (MCE), said on Monday when he was addressing a Municipal Meet the Press event organised by the Assembly at Dormaa-Ahenkro in the Bono Region.

The programme was a platform for the MCE to give account of development projects and other activities of the Assembly since January 2017 to the present day, and it was attended by religious leaders, traditional rulers, workers of both the formal and informal sectors and the general public.

Mr Ouattara said the amount disbursed covered businesses start-up kits purchases, education, agriculture inputs and medical bills of some of the beneficiaries that comprised the visually impaired, albinos and physically challenged persons.

He stated that the implementation of the Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP), a social cash transfer which targets the extremely poor and vulnerable households has recorded  a sharp increase in the number of beneficiary communities in the area from 30 to 60.

A total of 1,066 beneficiary households had been selected and enrolled as at 2016, Mr. Ouattara stated, adding that out of the additional 30 new communities, 15 of them have been enumerated (data collection) and enrolled on the E-Zwich platform of the LEAP programme.  

The MCE said 1,112 beneficiary households qualified from the 15 communities enumerated and indicated that the remaining fifteen communities too would soon be computed and enrolled on the programme.

Mr Ouattara said the Assembly would continue to make the health concern of the people a major priority on its developmental agenda and assured of its effective collaboration with the Health Directorate to eliminate the needless and avoidable child and maternal mortalities in the Municipality.

He said the Assembly was making strenuous effort to complete the Reproductive Health Centre under construction to enable the Health Directorate to use the facility for child and maternal healthcare delivery services.

The MCE mentioned a number of on-going projects in the Municipality, including a two-Unit Kindergarten Classroom Block with dining hall, resting room, office, store and six-seater water closet toilet at Kofiasua Primary School at Dormaa-Ahenkro.

Others are construction of a Youth Resource Centre, a 1000 metric tons grain warehouse and ancillary structures as well as Community Based Health Planning Services (CHPS) Compound at Amakyekrom and Kofiasua.