Government has issued a directive for all Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assembly (MMDAs) Unit Committees to be dissolved by October 7, 2019.
The directive is in keeping with the Constitutional timeframe for tenures of elected unit committee members, which exhausts after four years.
The outgoing members had been sworn in on October 5, 2015 and are supposed to leave office on October 5 2019, however, that date falls on a weekend, necessitating that the official dissolution happens on October 7, a week day.
Per the directive, the functions of the outgoing Unit Committee members are to be subsumed into the functions of Metropolitan, Municipal and District Chief executives and Coordinating Directors, until new members are elected on December 17, 2019.
The directive however does not apply to two Assemblies – Manya Krobo and Nkoranza South – because they have not had Unit Committees in place over the last four years.
In the case of Manya Krobo, the confirmation of the various committee members had not materialized as a result of a deadlock, while in the case of Nkoranza, a boycott in protest against government’s failure to compensate victims of a micro finance scam in 2015 were the causes.
The 17th December election will coincide with the referendum on the election of metropolitan, municipal and district chief executives (MMDCEs).
The Electoral Commission had fixed December 10, for the exercise but rescheduled it because of a Court injunction case which affected its timetable.