John Mahama Commends Voltarians, Gas

For Their Forbearance, Handling Of NPP’s Ethnocentric Comment

Vice-President John Dramani Mahama has commended the Chiefs and people of the Volta Region and Gas, for their tolerance and patience, following recent inflammatory and ethnocentric comments made by some members of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), particularly Kennedy Ohene Agyapong, the Member of Parliament for Assin North.

He, therefore, assured Voltarians in particular and Ghanaians in general, of Prof. Evans Atta Mills’s government’s readiness to deal with people of such characters, whose avowed aim was to foment trouble and create mayhem, before, during and after the elections on December 7, 2012.

The Vice-President’s visit to the Volta Regional capital, Ho, followed in the heels of the NPP flagbearer, Nana Akuffo-Addo’s recent meeting with the Volta Regional House of Chiefs to do some damage control to his political career in the wake of the ethnocentric comments made by Kennedy Agyapong, his warlord, in which he calls on Asantes to annihilate people of Ewe and Ga extraction.

Mr. Mahama was in Ho to launch the Ghana Urban Management Pilot Programme (GUMPP), which is being financed by the French Development Agency (AFD), at the cost of over 40 million Euros.

This is to support the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development for the cities of Kumasi, Tamale and Sekondi-Takoradi, with Ho Municipality as the only one municipal beneficiary.

Aside from capacity building support, GUMPP will finance the priority investment items of the four MMDAs, which will include markets, lorry parks, landfills; and it is expected to enhance the living conditions of the populations of Ho, Kumasi, Tamale and Sekondi-Takoradi.

According to the Vice-President, Ghana’s population was getting urbanized with about 53 per cent in the urban centres and 47 per cent in the rural areas, thus, putting a lot of pressure on urban services.

To address this situation, therefore, Mr. Mahama acknowledged the need to accelerate investment in urban settlements in order to improve the quality of lives of the people.

He said, the project fitted into the National Urban Policy, which aimed at improving lives in terms of health and wealth; services and the general economic activity in a sustainable manner.

Outlining the objectives of GUMPP as Mr. Mahama mentioned, is to increase people’s access to essential services, build financial and management capacity of Metropolitan and Municipal Assemblies; promote economic development and enhance revenue generation and strengthen urban planning, especially, house numbering and street naming.

The Vice-President said the launch in Ho was significant, because, the government of President Mills saw the need to build Ho up into a full Metropolitan status by the end of GUMPP.

Mr. Mahama also reminded detractors of the Mills administration, that the building of the University of Health and Allied Sciences in the Volta Region was on course and by September this year, the first batch of 200 students would be admitted.

He takes swipe at those who said there was nothing on the ground, and said many great universities in the world, including the University of Ghana, started in a humble beginning, but what is being experienced at the various campuses of the new university was unprecedented.

The Vice-President also mentioned the Eastern Corridor Road Project, the Eastern Corridor Multimodal Project and landing sites along the beaches of the coastal areas in the country, as some of the major projects being executed by the Mills’ administration.

He congratulated the people of the Volta Region for turning out massively in the recent Biometric registration exercise, which was conducted peacefully in the region.

Mr. Mahama appealed to the people to renew the mandate of Prof. John Evans Mills, come December 7, 2012, to continue with the good work that he had started.

He appealed to the beneficiaries of GUMPP to ensure the success of the project, so as to replicate it in other MMDAs.

For his part, the Minister of Local Government and Rural Development - MLGRD, Mr. Samuel Ofosu Ampofo, said the programme had been designed on the basis of local demand, piloted by all four cities, and that, the beneficiaries are responsible for its implementation.

He said the MLGRD, in charge of Urban Policy formulation, would be involved in the monitory and evaluation of the project.

The French Ambassador to Ghana, Mr. Frederic Clavier, pledges France’s continuous support for Ghana through its AFD.

He commended the government for its development policies and called for prudent use of the resources in the management of GUMPP.

The Kumasi Metropolitan Chief Executive (MCE) Mr. Samuel Sarpong, on behalf of the beneficiary MMDAs, thanked the government for selecting their areas for the pilot project and pledged to work hard to justify the confidence shown in them.

Present at the function were the Ministers of States, Chief Executives of MMDAs and Mr. Bruno Leclerc, the Resident Manager of AFD.

The Vice-President, later took a tour of both the Vice and Pro-Vice Chancellors’ residence and the campus of the university, to acquaint himself with the level of development on the ground.