Tamale, April 7, GNA - The European Union (EU), under its fifth Micro-project Programme has spent a total of 28.8 billion cedis to execute 355 projects in the Northern Region. The projects were: 127 educational structures, 56 KVIP toilets, 52 market stalls, and 42 boreholes.

The rest were 46 rural clinics and nurses' quarters, 19 road culverts and 13 storage facilities for some district assemblies. Alhaji Abubakar Saddique Boniface, Northern Regional Minister, announced this on Friday in Tamale in a speech read for him at the launch of the sixth Micro-Project Programme (MPP) and an information and education campaign in the Northern Region. District Chief Executives, (DCEs), District Coordinating Directors, (DCDs), District Finance and Budget Officers from the 18 districts of the Northern Region, attended the function. The launch was also to accord the participants the opportunity to deliberate on past projects and plan the way forward to benefit the rural communities.

Alhaji Boniface said the EU Micro-projects were significant achievements in the areas of the provision of social infrastructure and urged district assemblies to attach more importance to EU programmes. He said the programme had teething problems such as the lukewarm attitude of some participating districts, ineffective district implementation committees and irregular visits to projects sites. There was also the problem of improper cash flow to ensure that the district assemblies provided the counterpart funding to complete the projects on time.

Alhaji Boniface told the DCEs that the Regional Coordinating Council held the programme in high esteem and would not hesitate to sanction any district that performed below expectation.

He reminded them that the projects were community facilities and advised them to have constant interactions with the communities on the need for them to support the programme both materially and morally. The Reverend Otu-Pinpon, Deputy Programme Manager of the MPP indicated that under the sixth Micro-projects Programme, the EU Review projects such as markets would not be a priority, since some of them were sometimes misplaced needs of the people.

He cited the Bolgatanga, Lamashegu and other markets in the Upper West Region, which had not been in use years after they had been built. He said much attention would be given to people with disabilities to improve their standard of living.