Tamale, April 28, GNA - Alhaji Abdulai Haruna Friday, Tamale Metropolitan Chief Executive (MCE) has appealed to chiefs and opinion leaders in the Metropolis to give him the needed support to carry the development agenda for the area forward.

He said Tamale deserved better than its current status and needed the support of all including chiefs, other stakeholders and the youth to opt for peace, unity and togetherness to ensure that Tamale regained its past glory.

Alhaji Friday made the appeal on Tuesday in Tamale when he paid separate courtesy calls on some chiefs and traditional rulers in the Metropolis to formally present himself to them as the new MCE for the area.

The aim was also to enable the MCE to dialogue with the chiefs to see how best they could collectively change the "sinking image" of Tamale and to work out modalities that would transform the Metropolis to become a place haven of investments.

The palaces he visited included, the Dapkema palace, Bamvem-Lana, Bulpegu-Naa, Guma-Naa, Lamashe-Naa and Chog-Naa where he also explained his development agenda for the metropolis. Alhaji Friday said he would institute a peace project in the metropolis known as "Bilchincy Peace Initiative" with the aim of bringing all stakeholders in peace-building, chiefs, religious leaders and the youth together to see how they would work to bring lasting peaceto the metropolis.

He observed that the wanton disregard for Dagbon culture and traditional values, which the people cherished, could be attributed to poverty and total neglect of the rule of law and that with the collective effort of all, the situation would be reversed. He said the youth of Dagbon had to be assisted with employable skills and other useful ventures to ensure that they were always occupied so that they would refrain from violence. He said the Assembly and its development partners would continue to create the enabling environment to attract investors to ensure that Tamale regained its past glory.

The MCE pledged to wage a vigorous war against filth in the Metropolis and that he would institute a task force in charge of sanitation to work alongside sanitary inspectors to ensure that Tamale was kept clean.

All the palaces he went, the chiefs pledged to support in the development efforts of the metropolis and advised the MCE to put measures in place to ensure that all traffic lights within the metropolis were functional. Some of them appealed to the Assembly to ensure that they increased personnel at the Zoom Lion Company so that they would get rid of the filth that engulfed the Metropolis.