Zabzugu Assembly holds durbar

The Zabzugu District Assembly on Thursday, organised a community durbar in Zabzugu on the Street Naming and Property Addressing system (SNPA).

This is in response to a directive issued in April, 2013 by President John Dramani Mahama instructing the Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies to have their streets and landmark buildings named to facilitate better service delivery to the citizenry.

The durbar was attended by assembly members, chiefs and other local opinion leaders, religious heads, traders associations, heads of department and other key stakeholders in the district.

The purpose of the durbar was to seek the opinion of stakeholders on the proposed street names gathered by the Street Naming and Addressing Team at the preliminary stages of the exercise for validation.

Mr Issifu Alidu Laa-Bandow, District Chief Executive, listed a number of activities undertaken on the exercise, including the formation of the Street Naming and Addressing Team, developing of work plan and budget and acquisition and refurbishing of an office for the Physical Planning Department.

He said the exercise would facilitate easy identification of places, improve local revenue generation, and facilitate service delivery and better management of communities in the planning and putting up of structures, and appealed to the people to ensure its success.

Mr Takora Saaka, Deputy Northern Regional Director at the Physical Planning Department in Tamale, said the street names would portray the image and names of communities, which would be drawn from local history, culture and traditional beliefs of the people.

He said the SNPA would facilitate easy delivery of health, fire and security services especially in times of emergencies, and also improve easy location of critical facilities in the communities.