A Ho High court presided over by Mr Justice Kofi Essel Mensah has given the Hohoe Municipal Assembly an order to inaugurate the Agumatsa Area Council at Fodome-Helu on or before February 26, 2010.
The order, followed a motion on notice for judicial review filed by the Fiaga of Fodome Traditional area, Togbe Gbedegbleme Honu III, praying the court to compel the Hohoe Municipal Assembly to inaugurate the Agumatsa Area Council at Fodome-Helu with immediate effect.
In an affidavit supporting the motion, Togbe Gbedegbleme stated that the area council was supposed to have been inaugurated on January 29, 2007 but a petition by a section of the community agitating for the siting of the area council office at Fodome-Ahor obstructed the inauguration.
He added that on the said day, whilst the chiefs, elders and the entire community had gathered and were waiting for the arrival of an officer of the assembly for the inauguration, the presiding member of the Hohoe municipal assembly came to inform them that the assembly had received a petition from other communities within the Agumatsa Area Council objecting to the siting of the headquarters at Fodome-Helu.
The affidavit said as a result, the inauguration was called off and ever since all appeals to the assembly, had failed to inaugurate the Agumatsa Area Council, adding that the Hohoe Municipal Assembly had no mandate to change the capital of the area council and must comply with the provisions of LI 1462 which stipulated that the said Agumatsa Area Council headquarters should be sited at Fodome-Helu and not Fodome-Ahor.
It stated that the inability or refusal of the Hohoe Municipal Assembly to inaugurate the Agumatsa Area Council at Fodome-Helu had brought a lot of hardship to the communities comprising the Agumatsa area as levies and other rates were not being paid by the citizens for the development of the area.
Led by a legal counsel, Mr Ernest Gaewu, they filed an order of Mandamus to compel the municipal assembly to send its officers to inaugurate the Agumatsa Area Council at Fodome-Helu without any further delay on the part of the municipal assembly.
On December 13, 2000 a Ho High Court presided over by His Lordship Justice A. Asare-Korang granted an application for the orders of Certiorari and Mandamus and quashed the decision by the Hohoe municipal assembly to change the capital from Helu to Ahor and upheld the application that the municipal assembly had no mandate or power to unilaterally change, alter and deviate from the decisions taken and embodied in LI 1462 for which reason he had to compel the respondent to carry out the directives in LI1462.
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