Democracy was at its best on Tuesday at Saltpond when the constituents of the Mfantsiman West Constituency were given the opportunity to grill their Member of Parliament (MP) Mr. Aquinas Tawiah Quansah on issues bothering on the development of the area.
The inhabitants tasked flurry of questions on Health, employment creation and other development issues the MP made during a parliamentary debate for the various party candidates during the run-up to the 2012 elections.
During the debate, Mr. Quansah, now the Central Regional Minister, was said to have made several promises among which were the pledge to establish more community clinics and Community Health Improvement Project (CHIPS) compounds in the constituency.
He said he would aid the employment of trained personnel in sign language at all public institutions, especially the hospitals, to address the needs of the hearing-impaired and improve upon the street light system in the whole constituency.
Others were to ensure that People with Disabilities (PWDs) received training to help them earn decent living, and take them away from the streets; build fruit processing factories in the various communities to create employment for the youth, and establish youth development units to train the youth to trade in fish on commercial basis.
Having won the parliamentary seat and represented the Mfantsiman West Constituency for over a year, the constituents wanted to know whether the MP had delivered on his campaign promises, and whether there were indications of fulfilling them.
The occasion was facilitated by the Ghana Centre for Democratic Development (CDD-Ghana), a non-governmental think-tank on democratic issues, with support from the Open Society Initiative for West Africa (OSIWA).
According to Mr. Edward Ampratwum, a Senior Research Officer of CDD-Ghana, together with its partners, including the Coalition of Domestic Election Observers (CODEO), the organization had been following up on issues of governance in the country for some time now, and in 2012 it gave all parliamentary candidates in all the various constituencies a common platform to share their messages.
He noted that it was also incumbent on the CDD-Ghana to demand accountability from parliamentarians after they won power by facilitating a forum for the constituents to engage their MPs on the fulfillment of their campaign promises.
Mr. Quansah gave account of his stewardship, and stated that he had already fulfilled some of the promises he gave during the parliamentary debate.
He said though the Municipal Assembly was responsible for co-ordinating and implementing developmental issues within the Municipality, he had been able to carry out most of these projects through his own initiatives.
Some of these projects, he mentioned, included road and drainage construction, electricity extension to almost all the communities, and the absorption of PWDs, who cannot work due to their disability, onto the Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP) programme.
To address the need of the hearing impaired, the MP hinted he was pushing for a national policy for all public institutions to attach interpreters to help the deaf and dumb to communicate easily with service providers.
On road construction, he said the Prabiw-Korankyikrom-Zongo road was scheduled to be completed with drainage system from the CEDECOM’s budget when it was approved next year, with others earmarked to be completed in due course.
The Nsanfo and the Ekumfi communities, he added were to be sited for fruit processing factories so that the school feeding programme could fall on to provide fruit juice for pupils.
On health, Mr Quansah indicated that many CHPS compounds had been provided for the communities already, with the latest to be sited at Taaboso, and plans were far advanced to build a Polyclinic at Biriwa which would later be upgraded to a PharmaCentre.
The MP assured the constituents of his zeal to complete all his campaign promises and even do more by the time his four-year term ended.
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