THE Tamale Metropolitan Town and Country Planning Department faces the challenge of how to ensure the orderly growth and development of Tamale.
Tamale is a fast-growing metropolis, which places much responsibility on the department and the Tamale Metropolitan Assembly (TAMA) to provide adequate services for the accelerated growth of the area.
The department is, however, handicapped in fulfilling its obligations and responsibilities because of the financial constraints confronting it due mainly to the fact that it receives virtually no budgetary allocation to run the office let alone help develop the metropolis.
The objectives of setting up the department are in line with the Ghana Poverty Reduction Strategy (GPRS).
The department is primarily responsible for the proper planning of the metropolis to ensure the orderly development to attract investment and improve the local economy.
It is also to promote participatory urban planning as a strategy to address issues of good governance and civic responsibility, as communities will be involved in the formulation and implementation of development plans.
The Metropolitan Director of the department, Mr Sylvester Gyogluu, told the Daily Graphic in Tamale that “the department is a service department that does not charge fees. Therefore, it is difficult to raise revenue to run the department”.
He, therefore, called on the TAMA to help resource the department so that it could operate effectively.
“The assembly should, as a matter of urgency, step up support to improve development management as well as public planning education in the metropolis,” Mr Gyogluu stated.
He expressed regret that the department had no mandate to generate financial resources to support its own operations and therefore has to rely on the support of the assembly and the head office of the department in Accra.
The director mentioned inadequate staffing, lack of implementation of the decisions of the Statutory Planning Committee, generally weak development control resulting in unauthorised infrastructure developments, land sub-division and demarcations as some of the major challenges facing the department.
“The building inspectorate unit of the assembly needs to be urgently and adequately staffed to monitor developments and to start prosecuting developers, who wilfully encroach on public user areas at the law courts to serve as a deterrent to future culprits,” Mr Gyogluu stressed.
He urged chiefs to also help to reduce unauthorised development by co-operating with the land sector agencies in land delivery.
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