Most Reverend Alfred Agyenta, the Catholic Bishop of the Navrongo – Bolgatanga Diocese in the Upper East Region has called on people of the Region to ensure peace and security, to promote development.

He said the Region was unprivileged and conflicts over the years retarded its growth and scared potential investors away. “We can be our own enemies when we undermine the development or anything good that we want to do in the Region.” The Bishop urged all stakeholders, including; political, religious and traditional rulers to work together to instill peace in the Region, and said much of the work would have to be done by the citizenry.

Bishop Agyenta made the call when he contributed to discussions at a Town Hall meeting in Bolgatanga, organised at the instance of the Ministry of Information.

The meeting brought together some Ministers of State, Chief Executive Officers, Heads of Departments, Municipal and District Chiefs Executives, Religious Leaders and traditional rulers, leaders of political parties in the Region, members of the public and the media.

The forum offered stakeholders and members of the public the opportunity to quiz government officials on the implementation of policies in the Region, and to showcase both on-going and completed government projects across the Region. The Catholic Bishop said “We are the very people who suffer in the final analysis when there is conflict and destruction, we have no other place to go if we don’t sit up and address the issue of security and peace, then all the development work will go to nil.”

Touching on sanitation, Bishop Agyenta said if indigenes were not cautious about sanitation, its unbearable consequences would soon visit the Region, especially the Bolgatanga Municipality.

“I want to make a very special reference to the plastic waste. All of us have a responsibility to ensure that our Region is clean, if we are not healthy, we cannot work to develop the area”.

“I am making this passionate appeal to our leaders and to us as citizens of this Region. The government is not going to come and clean our houses and toilets. We are the very people who live in these conditions and therefore it is our responsibility to make this Region clean.”

“They say cleanliness is next to Godliness,” Bishop Agyenta said.