Tamale Mayor appeals for more grants

Mr Abdul-Rahman Abdul-Hanan Gundado, Tamale Metropolitan Chief Executive, has appealed to donor agencies especially the World Bank to consider increasing grants for the Tamale Metropolis.

He said though Tamale was a Metropolis, it was bedeviled with poverty, disease and poor education and sanitation infrastructure, which needed more development aid from the country’s donor partners.

Mr Gundado made the appeal on Thursday when a team from the World Bank (WB), Ghana office led by Mr Anthony Owusu, head of Monitoring and Evaluation at the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development (MLRD) paid a courtesy call on him.

The team was in the Metropolis to inspect World Bank funded projects, to check whether the Metropolis was making judicious use of the WB grants and to also find out areas in the Metropolis that need further support so that more grants might be allocated.

Mr Gundado said, “Even though we are a Metropolis, we are surrounded by poor communities who need aid urgently to improve education, sanitation, economic and other income generating facilities to improve their standard of living. I therefore plead with the WB to consider increasing its grants to the Metropolis so that we can develop”.

He said the Metropolitan Assembly was making judicious use of all grants received from donor partners including the WB, which they were using to construct school blocks, health facilities in some communities in rural Tamale, market stalls, toilets and lorry parks, all of which were aimed at improving lives.

He said Tamale was the gateway to the three northern regions and a safe haven for businesses adding that Tamale had also been adjudged the cleanest city in Ghana for so many years.

Mr Owusu commended the Assembly for the pace at which it had gone with the WB funded development projects.

“We are so far satisfied with what we have seen in graphic pictures of your ongoing projects and I will urge you to keep it up”, he said.

Mr Gundado later led the team to inspect some of the ongoing and completed projects in the Metropolis.