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General News of Sunday, 14 September 2003

Source: GNA

Kulungugu bomb site to be made tourist attraction

Kulungugu, Sept. 14, GNA - The Kulungugu bomb site, where a bomb attempt on the life of Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, first President of Ghana on August 11, 1962 is to be given a facelift to attract more tourists.

The Deputy Minister for Tourism and Modernisation of the Capital City (MTMCC), Mr Boniface Abubakar Saddigue said this when he paid a day's working visit to two tourist attraction products sites in the Bawku East District of the Upper East Region. The visit was to enable him to assess and evaluate potentials of the two product sites and how best these potentials could be developed to attract tourists.

The other site, the Naa Gbewaa shrine in Pusiga, would also receive a similar facelift to boost the tourism potential of the area.

Mr. Saddigue said the Ministry has drawn up a programme to unearth existing tourism potentials to improve the sector to increase earnings from 500 million dollars to 1.5 billion dollars annually. He said the move would improve the country's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and make the sector the next employer, after agriculture by the year 2007.

The Deputy Minister further said the Ministry is coming out with a four-year strategic plan, which would target specific areas such as capacity building product development, development of infrastructure and marketing in the tourism sector.

He said the Ministry intends to create a tourism development fund and it is already working on the bill, adding that when the bill gets presidential assent, monies from the fund would be used to support the hospitality industry to boost tourism.

Mr. Saddigue indicated that tourism potentials of the region would be explored, and called on the people of the area to consolidate the peace prevailing in the area and the country at large. The Regional Director of the Ghana Tourist Board, Madam Mary Agagonikre, who accompanied the Deputy Minister called on the people to jealously guide their heritage, but also be receptive to modernization.