In a highly candid indictment on the floor of Parliament, the Minister for Local Government, Chieftaincy and Religious Affairs, Hon. Ahmed Ibrahim, has strongly condemned the heavy mismanagement and abuse of the Persons with Disabilities (PWDs) Common Fund at the local assembly level.
Speaking on Tuesday, June 23, 2026, to mark the National Day of Persons with Disabilities, the Minister delivered a blistering critique of Metropolitan, Municipal, and District Assemblies (MMDAs), confirming that public funds allocated by the President and approaved by Parliament for vulnerable citizens are systematically failing to reach them.
The Minister’s parliamentary address strongly validates the ongoing outcries of the disability community and recent investigative exposés in districts like Ada East, where local PWDs have boycotted rotten, weevil-infested livelihood items bought by assembly officials.
Addressing the Speaker and Members of Parliament, the Minister revealed a deep-seated lack of transparency within local assemblies, accusing Metropolitan and District Finance Officers of hiding fund allocations from the very departments meant to help PWDs.
“The disbursement of the money that has been approved, when you go to the MMDAs, it is not being done religiously,” the Minister stated. “Some metropolitan and district finance officers are not religiously disclosing to the social welfare officers how much money the President is giving to be given to persons with disabilities and approved by Parliament.”
To curb this administrative secrecy, the Minister urged MPs to act as aggressive watchdogs in their respective constituencies.
“You need to put fire on the social welfare officers,” the Minister urged Parliament.
Ridiculing the “TV and Fridge” Distributions
In his most critical remarks, the Minister ridiculed the arbitrary procurement practices of some local officials. He questioned why Social Welfare Officers spend PWD resources buying bulk quantities of household appliances without consulting a database of what the local disability community actually needs.
“You go, and some social welfare officers go and buy quantities of television sets and refrigerators, claiming they are coming to do distributions. That is not it!” the Minister fumed.
This direct criticism of arbitrary “distributions” mirrors the escalating crisis in Ada East, where assembly officials purchased livelihood items without a proper valuation or consultation, leading to a massive six-month boycott and an independent assembly probe that has recommended the immediate resignation of the District Social Welfare Director.
A Proposed Direct Alert to MPs
To bypass local bureaucratic cover-ups, the Minister proposed an immediate structural change in how PWD Common Fund releases are tracked.
He called on the Administrator of the District Assemblies Common Fund (DACF) to bypass assembly management and directly notify Members of Parliament whenever disability funds are dispatched to their districts.
“I will call the Administrator for the Common Fund; when the money is sent to the district, give an advice (payment notice) to the MP representing them, so that the MP will be aware of how much money has been allocated to persons with disabilities in that district,” the Minister proposed. He charged every MP to take a personal, active interest in auditing these funds locally.
A Nationwide Systemic Failure
The Minister made it clear that these abuses are not isolated to a few assemblies. He recalled a massive monitoring exercise conducted during a previous Parliament, where he and a delegation led by Hon. Patricia Appiagyei (then Parliamentary Committee Chairperson) toured approximately 150 districts across Ghana.
The tour, the Minister said, proved beyond doubt that PWD funds were systematically not being disbursed faithfully.
With the Local Government Minister publicly acknowledging the rot and ordering Parliament to “put fire” on non-compliant officers, disability advocates say the next step must go beyond words.
They are demanding immediate, nationwide audits of all 261 assemblies, and the swift passage of the 2026 Disability Re-enactment Bill to turn these administrative warnings into criminal prosecutions.
SOURCE: DisabilityNewsGH.com
