Publications & Reports Legislative

The New Sub-Metroplitan District Council Establishment Instruments

This is a Legislative Alert newsletter

The core argument of this paper is that sufficient reconciliation was not done between the Amendment Legislative Instruments and the original Legislative Instruments, and between the Tamale Metropolitan Assembly Legislative Instrument and the Amendment Legislative Instruments for the other three Metropolitan Assemblies, such that the legislative frameworks for the establishment and operation of the SMDCs are presently very clumsy and in a state of total confusion.
What exists is real legislative confusion. Nomenclatures and concepts have been used that are not known to the law. A SubDistrict Assembly has been referred to that is non-existent and functions have been assigned that cannot be justified either because the sectors to which those functions belong are not decentralized or because powers have purportedly been given that the SMDCs do not or cannot have.
But first, let us deal with the original SMDCs.