Let’s change our challenges to opportunities - Kpone MCE

Solomon Tetteh Appiah, Kpone-Katamanso Municipal Chief Executive has called on Ghanaians especially those in leadership positions to turn the country’s challenges into developmental opportunities.

He said it was not enough for people to complain about challenges without looking deep into how to create opportunities while solving them.

Mr Appiah said when he took office as the MCE, the youth complained and threatened to embark on series of demonstrations due to the leakage sipping into the communities and the lagoon from the Kpone Landfill site, a situation he promised to turn around.

“I was able to convince the Minister of Sanitation, Water Resources to transform the unwanted mountain of refuse into an ongoing re-engineering place which when completed would have access roads, fencing, and trees among others and would be suitable for recreational purposes,” he said.

The MCE said this in an interaction with Ghana News Agency (GNA)-Tema team led by Mr Francis Ameyibor, Tema Regional Manager when they called on him at Kpone and its environs to meet leaders in the Area.

The GNA-Tema Team also met the Paramount Chief of Kpone Traditional Council.

Mr Appiah said he was embarking on other means to change the challenges in Kpone-Katamanso into beneficial ventures for the people saying, “let’s try and change our challenges into opportunities, complaining alone won’t solve any problem”.

He said the country was far behind in development and something drastic must be done, noting that indiscipline in the system was too much especially in sanitation challenges leading to his outfit spending so much in tackling such issues which deprived the Assembly of the needed funds for development.

He said another way for the localities to develop was to have proper decentralization, where all institutions would have their district offices for easy access as it pertained in other countries such as South Africa.

“We said we are creating decentralization, but we have to move to other districts to solve our utility issues, among others. We have scattered everything and we say we want to work together”, he added.

Mr Ameyibor commended the Kpone-Katamanso MCE for the initiative, “as the tenets leadership is to solve problems, offer alternatives and develop your organization, people and the community”.

He explained that the GNA Tema Regional office had embarked on strategic stakeholder engagement with state and non-state actors and civil society organizations towards nation-building.

“We recognize the excellence in stakeholder engagement, which we believe will assist GNA and our stakeholders to deliver and ensure that society plays an active watchdog role for institutions to perform.”

He said established in 1957 as the first news agency in Sub-Saharan Africa, GNA contributed to African and Ghanaian emancipation; “Ghana's first President, Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, regarded GNA as a counter-weight to biased reporting by international news agencies and GNA’s mission is to help build a viable, cohesive nation-state”.

Mr Ameyibor said the GNA-Tema office had therefore embarked on a project to engage all local government structures, the MMDAs, to develop and deepen the working relations to ensure that Ghanaians participated actively in development projects.