Vice President tells Regional Ministers to eschew arrogance

Sunyani, March 10, GNA - Vice President John Dramani Mahama on Wednesday advised Regional Ministers to eschew arrogance and partisanship in the performance of their duties.

He urged them to also be fair and objective in dealing with people, who voted the National Democratic Congress (NDC) into power to be able to achieve their campaign promises of deepening local level democracy through accelerating decentralization and local development. Vice President Mahama gave the advice when he addressed a review meeting of Regional Ministers at Sunyani in the Brong Ahafo Region. "Do not be overly partisan and arrogant. Your government will soon be going to elections, and your winning will partly depend on how you perform your duties and relate with the people who offered you this opportunity to serve them," he told them.

The Vice President also urged the ministers to exhibit a high level of fairness in the distribution of development projects to avoid acrimony and bitterness among people.

Vice President Mahama tasked the Regional Ministers to constantly liaise with farmers and farming groups to identify peculiar farming challenges to ensure food sufficiency in the coming years. He urged the Regional Coordinating Councils to strengthen their coordination and monitoring mechanisms to ensure that Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs) delivered in line with government's policies.

"Indeed RCCs are expected to provide strong technical backstopping, coordination, monitoring and evaluation support to Assemblies to achieve coherent and sustainable progress within their geographical regions," he said.

Mr Joseph Yieleh Chireh, Minister for Local Government and Rural Development said the government had kept faith with its campaign promises by organizing Regional Stakeholders Conferences for people to contribute their quotas to help deepen the decentralization programme in the country. He said the passage of the 1961 legislative instrument that established the Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies was adequate demonstration of how committed the government was to the promotion of local level democracy.

Mr Chireh gave the assurance that the school feeding programme would soon be revised to commit MMDAs to own programmes in their areas of jurisdiction.

Mr Kwadwo Nyamekye Marfo, Brong Ahafo Regional Minister said since assuming office, government had chalked successes in security, the rule of law, expansion in infrastructural development such as electricity, education, health, water and sanitation. He added that jobs have also been created and therefore asked his colleague Regional Ministers to trumpet those achievements for acknowledgement.

Mr Marfo, who is also the in-coming chairman of the conference, commended all their partners especially German Development Cooperation GTZ that had expressed the desire to assist each region with technical experts for development.