Politics

WR minister ends regional tour at EKMA

The Western Regional Minister, Mr Kwabena Okyere Darko-Mensah, has toured some institutions in the Effia Kwesimtsim Municipality (EKMA) on Tuesday to end his one month tour of the region.

The tour was to enable him interact with the people, listen to their challenges and come up with pragmatic solutions.

At the EKMA, the Minister stated that the NPP government led by Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, had demonstrated good governance by rendering accountability to Ghanaians and it was therefore impendent on him to follow suit in being accountable to his people from time to time.

The Minister commended the assembly for the intriguing performance under its one year in existence and urged assembly members to continue to uphold the virtues of discipline, timeliness and punctuality. He also urged them to submit their reports to the assembly on time in order to avoid being tagged as a lazy region.

He admonished them to refrain from leaking sensitive documents, especially on budgets, to the public as that was a bad practice, cautioning that “whoever is found guilty of such act would need to explain to me the reason backing the action”.

On the issue of sanitation, Mr Darko-Mensah said the rate at which filth had swallowed the region was disturbing, which he noted  had resulted in regular flooding incidents in the region, stressing that the assembly spent about 30 per cent of its revenue in cleaning up the environment.

Some members of staff suggested a sanitation court be set up where persons who flout rules would be tried, adding that culprits should be made to desilt drainages as a form of punishment to curb flooding in the region.

The Minister tasked the assembly to support privately owned businesses to succeed and explained that if private businesses flourished, they would be able to pay their taxes and that would generate more income for the assembly.

Mr Kojo Acquah, the Municipal Chief Executive, said the upcoming “Ghana secondary city programme” scheduled for September this year, was targeted at supporting 25 municipalities with an amount of $1,000,000 to tackle drainage problems and the construction of bigger culverts to control flooding.

On the issue of the three kidnapped girls, the Regional Police Commander, Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCOP), R. V. Dedjoe said it was heartbreaking that the people of Western Region were not appreciative of the efforts of the police in rescuing the girls.

DCOP Dedjoe explained that such cases were delicate and took time in solving, adding, “It entails diligent work to get to the bottom of such cases. The best we can do is to get the person who is responsible for the crime and he is in our custody, but we need to take our time to get all the needed information from him to help us solve the case.”

He pleaded with Ghanaians to be patient with the police, as they were also parents and understood the emotional trauma that came with it.

Mr Okyere Darko-Mensah later visited the Takoradi Technical Institute (TTI) and Takoradi Secondary School (TADISCO) to acquaint himself with their activities.

He encouraged the students to focus more on the private sector and not only employment from the public sector, as studies had proven that entrepreneurs were more comfortable in life than public sector workers.

Mr Darko-Mensah explained that with an adult working population of 14 million, about 13.3 million were in the private sector, leaving the government sector with 700,000.  GNA

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