People sabotaging Dagbon peace initiatives - Kufuor

Kumasi, Aug. 25, GNA - President John Agyekum Kufuor said on Monday that he succeeded as ECOWAS Chairman in brokering peace in Cote d'Ivoire and Liberia because the people were prepared to talk peace. However, he said, the opposite is the case in the Dagbon situation where there are people bent on ensuring that the government does not succeed in restoring peace to the area.

President Kufuor was answering a question on why he could not find peace in Dagbon in spite of restoring peace to Cote d'Ivoire and Liberia at a short encounter with the media in Kumasi as part of his tour of Ashanti.

He said besides efforts being made by some eminent chiefs, he has personally been involved in the peace moves by talking to both sides at the least opportunity.

President Kufuor said the government is not making public efforts it is making because it does not want people to subvert these efforts. Touching on the intention of government to use two-and-a-half per cent of Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT) Pension Fund for the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), he said the government is not taking the money directly from the 17 per cent of workers contributions.

President Kufuor said the government would access SSNIT's ingestible fund that is available to even private companies and cited the Council for Indigenous Business Association (CIBA) that took 41 million dollars from SSNIT as well as VANEF.

"Now the CIBA loan for instance has become a bad investment and a debt and SSNIT does not know where to recover it from."

He said it is not wholly true that it is only workers in the public sector, who will bear the cost of funding the scheme.

"The private sector will definitely be involved as the scheme moves on."

On how the President's Special Initiatives (PSI) were catching on, President Kufuor said the response is encouraging and that the initiative on salt is generating a lot of interest from young and energetic investors while the cassava initiative has also gone beyond Bawjiase to other areas.