Government is seriously considering the introduction of Citizenship Identity Cards to help determine the actual population of the country. Chiefs and opinion leaders have therefore been urged not to allow the figures contained in the 2000 Population and Housing Census to create unnecessary anxiety and tension.

President Kufuor made this known in reaction to concerns raised by a delegation of chiefs and opinion leaders from the Upper West Region, which called on him at the Castle. According to the chiefs, the figures concerning the region contained in the census report are contentious since they did not capture the actual population of the region.

President Kufuor said the census report is a technical document, which needs to be analysed carefully before any protests or objections are made. He told the chiefs and people of the region that although the NPP did not win any seat in the region in the last parliamentary elections, government would be very objective in the provision of development projects.

“Once in power, the government is bound to provide even development of the country and not on partisan basis.” The Paramount Chief of the Zini Traditional Area and Vice President of the Regional House of Chiefs, Kuoro Doctawie Nania, catalogued a number of difficulties facing the region, which he said has contributed to mass migration of the people to the south.

Foremost among them is the fact that the region has only seven per cent of tarred roads and is the only region whose regional capital, Wa is not linked to any other regional capital by tarred road. Kuoro Doctawie Nania appealed to the President to expedite action on the Wa Polytechnic as well as the proposed campus of the University of Development Studies.

He also noted that Wa is the only regional capital without a reference hospital and the district hospital built more than 50 years ago is dilapidated and cannot meet the demands of the people for quality services.