By Mildred Siabi-Mensah
Takoradi, Oct. 26, GNA – The Western Regional Minister, Mr Kwabena Okyere Darko-Mensah has called on the 14 Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs), under his authority to hold on to the Western Region Agenda of inclusive Development.
“We have a Western Region Agenda to prosecute -create wealth as our contribution towards the development of our people”, He added.
Mr Darko-Mensah therefore encouraged all the district assemblies to turn their challenges into opportunities to increase performance and solve the critical need of job creation for economic empowerment.
The Minister was speaking at the first Regional Coordinating Council Meeting in fulfilment of the provision in the Local Government Act.
The meeting, to be held twice in a year afforded District assemblies the means to reason among themselves, strengthen best performance and confront challenges head on.
Mr Darko-Mensah highlighted issues pertaining to governance, security, projects, private sector, and government flagship programmes.
The Minister reported on the calm and peaceful environment within the Region despite pockets of chieftaincy disputes and impressed upon chiefs within the Region to begin ironing out all chieftaincy challenges to ensure unity in progress.
The Minister stated that work on the railways, Takoradi market, the Paa Grant road-interchange, the agenda 111 among other state interventions were on course to restore hope to the people of the Region.
On Agriculture, he said the Region had received some 100,000 coconut seedlings to revive the coconut industry, procured a contractor to help in rice cultivation to boost the sector and called for more women involvement in agriculture.
The Minister, while commending the Tarkwa assembly for its rigorous actions against illegal mining tasked others to think about the destructive nature of illegal mining and come on board to save the country from such social deviants.
Mr. Benjamin Kesse, the District Chief Executive for the Tarkwa Municipal assembly said the introduction of river guards would help to save lives and property from the nefarious activities of illegal miners.
He said, “we need not to demonize mining but what we need to guard against is the bad practices associated with it by these small miners.”
Mr. Kesse therefore called for more approved sites through the community mining initiatives to save the forest and water bodies.
GNA