Member of Parliament (MP) for Suhum constituency and former Minority Chief Whip, Hon Fredrick Opare Ansah is disturbed by what he calls a deliberate attempt by the Suhum Municipal Assembly in delaying or not releasing requests for disbursement of his common fund.

The worried MP says he has worked for almost 12 years with the Assembly without any difficulty, but the Assembly has developed an attitude of not releasing request of his common fund in recent times.

According to him, there have been several instances where he has written to the Assembly for the release of funds to some communities that needed cement for rehabilitation and construction of schools, re-roofing of schools among other interventions, but the Assembly declined to release the fund for the projects.

The MP made the disclosure to Joy News' Maxwell Kudekor after he donated ¢10,000 to support the construction of a senior high school at Nankese.

"They find all sorts of reasons down to the fact that documents are missing. My assistant went to the office and together with him they had to find the documents that have been with for months only to find it at the bottom of the pile at the registry where documents are received," Mr. Ansah said.  

He bemoaned the fact that projects which do not belong to any political party but the people of Suhum are being stalled by the Assembly leaving him frustrated with all the feet dragging. 

The MP feels the delay of the release of his common fund is a sabotage by the MCE and the Assembly to quash his initiatives and paint a picture that the MP is not working.

Mr. Ansah said he has to resort to other means of funding in order to enable him to carry some interventions for his constituents.    

He thinks this is for political expediency as people at the Municipal Assembly "right from the Municipal Chief Executive (MCE) probably assisted by some of the staff" are doing that to prevent his efforts for development.

"Last week I called to cancel four projects, one, in particular, is over six months since I sent the request. The others range between three to four months since we sent the request," he said.  

Mr. Ansah said the amounts involved are not ones that one can use a substantive contractor because with the nature of the project they mostly use direct labour and artisan to do the job.

"You are going to construct shelves in a library. This is not something you are going to give to a company that has overheads, so I had had to resort to other means to do this work," Mr. Ansah said.    

Attempt to reach the Assembly for response proved futile as the MCE was unavailable.