DEMONSTRATION AND DISTRIBUTION OF POS DEVICES TO REVENUE CENTRES
The African Smart Towns Network (ASTON) which begun in 2019 has officially ended on31st March, 2023.
The ASToN project seeks to digitize the revenue systems of the Assembly and to gradually move away from the manual collections of levies and tolls.
The development partners of KMA namely the GIZ assisted the Assembly to developed a software- dLRev whiles UNCDF also came in with capacity building and data collection.
The Mayor, Hon. Samuel Pyne stated that, the Assembly’s quest to digitize its revenue collections is to eliminate all forms revenue leakages whiles enhancing efficiency, accountability and improve services to the public.
“in tackling the challenges in revenue generation and mobilization at the Assembly, we sort for support from some of our development partner and we have been able to build a database of almost all businesses and properties in Kumasi and so we needed
to procure devices for our revenue officers that would help raid of the human element”.
Hon. Pyne expressed his excitement about this achievement especially for KMA to be able to maximize it Internally Generated Fund (IGF) through digitized means.
The Metro Chief Executive, reiterated that, the ASToN project has culminated into the acquisition of 70 Point of Sale internet connected devices (POS) to be shared among the five sub-metros.
The POS was jointly purchase by KMA, GIZ, ASToN and UNCDF with each device costing Two thousand Cedis he added.
Hon. Pyne cease the occasion to appreciate the development partners of the Assembly in this regard.
He cautioned that anyone caught to have engaged in anything that would shortchange the Assembly would be dealt with according to the law.
The Metro Finance Officer, Mr. David Abbam Adjei in a media interview said, most Assemblies are mandated by the laws of the country to raise revenue and to use them t for the benefits of the people. This process is not an easy one and has its own challenges, he categorizes them as data, storage and collection process.
Mr. Adjei stated that, due to the above-mentioned challenge the Assembly propose to it development partners to assist KMA to address these challenges since the responsibilities expected of KMA is huge.
The Finance Officer indicated, that, the efforts have resulted into a robust data of properties, businesses and others with about 95% completed giving room fore-billing and payment systems.
He added that, the presence of the P.O.S devices is already connected to the internet and it will not only collect revenue but continuously update our data on new revenue points.
Mr. Abbam Adjei called on the public to come on board this new train as the input collected from them during the public engagement were all taken into account and should not hesitate to contact any KMA office for seek redress.
Finally, the media were taken on a tour to the new data center where the digitized systems would be run from.