Funsi (UW), April 24, GNA - This year's People's assemblies in the Upper West Region ended at Funsi in the Wa East District at the weekend with people taking swipes at the government for the slow pace of the Rural Electrification programme and the bad roads in the region. The government, however, received wide commendation for improving education infrastructure and the introduction of the Capitation Grant that had raised enrolment figures in the region by 19,646 and the NEPAD School feeding programme.

The annual assemblies offer a platform for the people to express their views and ask questions about policies affecting them. Other issues that were raised were the non-implementation of the NRC report, youth unemployment in the region, delays in the release of feeding grants to senior secondary schools in northern Ghana and lack of irrigation facilities in the region.

Mr Ambrose Dery, the Upper West Regional Minister, Dr Kofi Konadu Apraku, the Minister of State for Regional Integration and NEPAD and Mr Clement Eledi, a Deputy Minister of Food and Agriculture, responded to some of the concerns raised at the assemblies.

Mr Dery said a consultant had already toured all the districts in the region to assess the communities that would be connected to the national electricity grid this year under the self-help electrification project.

He explained that scarcity of chippings was retarding road development in the region and to address that problem the Regional Coordinating Council was making efforts to establish a quarry in the region.

On irrigation, he said a team of experts recently toured the region and identified four valleys in each of the eight districts as potential dam sites.

Dr Apraku said the country could not progress if a section of the populace made it a daily pre-occupation to undermine the government and play politics with every developmental programme initiated by it. He said the NEPAD 'E' Programme that would soon be introduced and would ensure that senior secondary schools had ICT centres that could be linked to any part of the world to promote teaching and learning. Mr Eledi said the Ministry of Food and Agriculture had allocated 204 million cedis to each district as a revolving fund to support needy farmers.

He also announced that structures in the Babile Agricultural Station in the Lawra District would be rehabilitated and the place turned into a facility for training people in animal traction. 25 April 06