WR minister ends his regional tour at Effia Kwesimtsim Municipality

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 to interact with the People and 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 them to continue to uphold the virtues of discipline, timeliness, punctuality and 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 the 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 environmental.

Some members of staff suggested a sanitation court be set up at 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 coverts 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 deligent 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 who is still 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 aquaint himself with their activities. He encouraged the students to focus more on the private sector and not only employment from the public sector aa 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 14million, about 13.3million were in the private sector leaving the government sector with 700,000. "If you want to be rich, engage yourself in entrepreneurship", he added. The Regional Minister informed the management of TTI that as part of the free SHS programme, Tullow Ghana had agreed to build a 12-unit classroom block for the school. He promised to personally build a dormitory for the school and provide 10 industrial sewing machines as well as provide 200 dual desks. At Tadisco he promised the administration to construct a six unit classroom block, toilet facility, library and also set up an ICT laboratory for the school by the end of July this year and provide 40 computers for the lab. He said the government would provide all necessities needed in making the free SHS programme a success and promised that no child would be left behind in the free SHS programme. The Minister's tour also took him to the Kwesimtsim hospital, where he visited the accidents and emergency unit, maternity unit, female ward and children's ward. The management mentioned inadequate infrastructure and equipment to aid their service, no ambulance and staff accommodation as some of challenges of the facility, stating that the hospital was located in the centre of the municipality and therefore had a high patronage. Last year, the hospital attended to a little over 8,000 patients and recorded two maternal deaths in May this year due to the unavailability of an ambulance to convey the patients to the regional hospital. The Members of Parliament for Effia and Kwesimtsim, Mr Joe Mensah and Mr. Joseph Cudjoe respectively promised to secure two ambulances for the hospital to prevent such cases from occurring.