By Daniel Bampoe
The Minority Caucus in Parliament has sharply criticised government’s fiscal priorities, questioning why billions of cedis were released to the Ghana Education Trust Fund (GETFund) while constitutionally guaranteed funds for local governments under the District Assemblies Common Fund (DACF) remain locked in arrears, leaving district assemblies across the country financially crippled.
Addressing a press conference in Accra, Minority Chief Whip and Member of Parliament for Nsawam-Adoagyiri, Frank Annoh-Dompreh, said the contrast between the treatment of GETFund and the DACF exposes what he described as a disturbing distortion in national funding priorities, where constitutionally entrenched local development financing is treated as less important than other statutory funds.
According to the Minority, while district assemblies continue to struggle with unpaid DACF obligations, government has made substantial and timely releases to the Ghana Education Trust Fund.
They cited early 2025 disbursements running into billions of cedis to GETFund, covering several months of funding, as evidence that when government prioritises a fund, resources can be mobilised and released without delay.
In contrast, they said the DACF—protected under Article 252 of the 1992 Constitution—has been subjected to chronic under-transfers, delays, and arrears, despite being constitutionally guaranteed as not less than 5% of total national revenue.
The Minority argued that this creates a paradox where a statutory fund like GETFund enjoys predictable releases, while a constitutionally entrenched fund like the DACF is left in financial limbo.
They described this as a fundamental inversion of Ghana’s constitutional hierarchy of public finance.
“If statutory funds are being paid, why is a constitutional fund being starved?” the Minority asked, arguing that the DACF should, by law and logic, enjoy at least the same level of fiscal discipline and protection as GETFund and similar funds.
The Minority stressed that the consequences of this imbalance are visible across the country. While education infrastructure projects financed by GETFund continue to move forward, many district-level projects funded through the DACF—such as feeder roads, school blocks, clinics, markets, sanitation facilities and water systems—have stalled. Contractors remain unpaid, projects are abandoned, and communities are left without essential services.
They warned that this selective funding approach undermines decentralisation, as district assemblies depend almost entirely on the DACF to implement their Medium-Term Development Plans. Without timely DACF releases, local governments are reduced to administrative shells, unable to carry out development responsibilities assigned to them by the Constitution.
The Minority also linked the issue to the long-standing problem of DACF arrears, noting that significant portions of recent payments were merely settlements of old debts dating back more than a decade, rather than evidence of consistent constitutional compliance. Billions of cedis in DACF obligations, they said, remain unpaid, translating into delayed development and deepening inequality between communities.
From their perspective, the contrast with GETFund funding exposes not a lack of resources, but a lack of political and fiscal will to prioritise local government financing.
“This is not about scarcity; it is about choice,” the Minority insisted, arguing that government has demonstrated its capacity to fund statutory schemes when it deems them important.
They therefore called on government to apply the same urgency and discipline used in funding GETFund to the DACF. This includes immediate clearance of arrears, automatic revenue-based computation of DACF transfers, and strict quarterly disbursement mechanisms that prevent discretionary delays.
They further urged Parliament to strengthen oversight to ensure that constitutionally guaranteed funds are not subordinated to administrative preferences, and called on civil society and the media to sustain pressure for transparency in the management of public funds.
The Minority said the issue goes beyond budgeting and accounting—it is a constitutional test. While GETFund continues to receive large releases for national education infrastructure, district assemblies remain deprived of the funds that sustain grassroots development. Until this imbalance is corrected, they warned, decentralisation in Ghana will remain structurally weak, and development will continue to bypass the very communities the Constitution was designed to protect.
