Zini, March 23, GNA - Mr Ambrose Dery, the Upper West Regional Minister, has urged men in the region to discard the age-old traditional belief that women and children are their personal property whom they can handle or treat in a way that they deemed fit. Instead, they should accord them respect and equal rights and liberty to live in dignity as required by law and constitution of the country.
Mr Dery made this appeal when he addressed paramount chiefs of Zini, Plulima and Wellembelle and their people in the newly created Sissala West District as part of his visit to parts of the region. The tour also took him to Tumu in the Sissala East District where the minister addressed a mini durbar organized in his honour by Kuoro Gilbert Kanton, Paramount Chief of the Tumu Traditional Area. Mr Dery said it was not only wrong for women who work the hardest to provide for the family to be treated as though they had no rights and privileges.
Mr Dery advised men to give equal priority to girl child education as they do to boys.
At all the four places the minister visited, the chiefs called for improvement in road networks in their areas, while the Zini, Wellembele and Pulima chiefs appealed for the extension of electricity from the national electricity grid to their areas.
At Tumu, the Tumu Kuoro, Gilbert Kanton told the minister that an acute water shortage had hit the town as a result of the drying up of the town's only dam as a result of silt.
In reaction to their requests, Mr Dery assured them he would do everything possible to address their demands.
