President Kufuor addresses durbar at Bawku

President John Agyekum Kufuor on Thursday tasked the Bawku East District Assembly to get itself a District Chief Executive (DCE) and a Presiding Member within the next one-week or risk his personal intervention.

He explained that Act 462, Section 43; Sub Section 2 empowers him as President to suspend or dissolve any District Assembly if the need arises, but that he had no intention of exercising those powers in the Bawku area because he wants good reason to prevail.

President Kufuor said the decentralisation concept was introduced by the 1992 Constitution to make governance efficient and meaningful to the people. However, from the conduct of members of the assembly so far it appeared they were trying to make the administration of the District difficult and thus deny the area the opportunity to develop alongside the rest of the country, he said.

President Kufuor was addressing a well-attended durbar of the chiefs and people of the Bawku Traditional Area on the second day of his three-day official visit to the Upper East Region at Bawku.

President Kufuor observed that for far too long the Bawku area had suffered from negative partisan politics and ethnic conflicts and that the time was ripe for the people to abandon their rigid positions so as to co-exist peacefully.

He said under the present circumstances it would be difficult, if not impossible for the area to benefit from the government's laudable development policies and urged the elders of Bawku to think deeply about the future of their children and renounce conflicts.

President Kufuor said under the Highly Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative, each district assembly would receive one billion cedis for development project but without peace and the right structures in place he did not see how Bawku could make use of its share profitably.

He said his administration would stick to its principle of fairness to all Ghanaians and non-interference in chieftaincy matters, adding: "We believe that any issue pertaining to chieftaincy should be handled by the National House of Chiefs".

Of all the 110 districts in the country only Bawku East remains without a DCE and Presiding Member. Several attempts over the past one and a half years to meet and confirm the President's nominee for the position of a DCE had failed.

Mr Kwadwo Baah-Wiredu, Minister of Local Government and Rural Development said 700 million cedis belonging to the assembly was lying down unutilised because of the absence of an appropriate authority to disburse the money.

"These monies would have helped to reduce poverty among the people of the District if peace were allowed to prevail, he said, adding that the absence of proper administrative structures in the district did not augur well for development.

He urged the people to put the past behind them and help the government to bring development to the area. Mr Baah-Wiredu said the people of Bawku should blame no one but themselves for the exacerbation of poverty and suffering if they continued to stick to the way of violent conflicts.