Politics

Minister solicits German support to build MMDAs capacity

Dr Hafiz Bin Salih, the Upper West Regional Minister has lauded the German government for initiating refresher courses on critical areas of decentralisation and good governance to help build the capacity of staff of Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs).

He also appealed to them to support the capacity building of staff of the MMDAs, which was equally critical for the effective delivery of the decentralisation system.

Dr Bin Salih who made the appeal when the German Ambassador to Ghana, Mr Christoph Retzlaff and his entourage paid a courtesy call on him in Wa, also wanted more support in terms of vehicles to facilitate effective monitoring of development programmes between the two countries.

The Regional Minister also commended the German government for its agriculture and climate change projects and the 17 megawatt solar power project being embarked on in the region.

He also appealed to the Ambassador to link the region up to some cities in Germany for sister-city relations in order to deepen their friendship and foster more development cooperation between Ghana and Germany.

Mr Retzlaff acknowledged the importance of capacity building to enhance governance and said it was the way to go, stressing that there were existing 40 university partnership and cooperation programmes between Ghana and Germany.

He said sister-city relations was also an important area of deepening their friendship and assured that he had taken note of that for further action.

On the visit to the region, the German Ambassador to Ghana noted that after joining the President last week to cut sod for the construction of a combined 17 megawatt solar plant projects at Kaleo and Lawra, he and his team were back for two and a half days to tour the region and visit a couple of agriculture and good governance projects.

Mr Retzlaff disclosed that few days ago, the European Union launched a border management and capacity building and support programme to help improve security issues at the borders.

He noted that the Government of Germany was also interested in improving security in the West Africa sub-region, hence the intention to visit the Ghana Burkina Faso border in order to familiarise himself with the security concerns at the border.

“Upper West Region is a strong regional partner to the German Government – we have long standing strong friends and cooperation with the region and the government,” he said.

This, according to Mr Retzlaff had resulted in the initiation of strong projects including the Compact West Africa and the German-Ghanaian Reform and Investment Partnership, which was making a lot of German companies to look towards Ghana for investment.

“There is a lot of substance in our bilateral relations and I’m here to strengthen our cooperation with the administration and people of the region,” Mr Retzlaff added.

GNA

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