Regional News of Tuesday, 3 July 2007

Source: GNA

Volta Region needs a strategic development plan

Hohoe, July 03, GNA - Mr Raymond Okudzeto, Founder and President of Volta Foundation has observed that Volta Region required a strategic development road map to promote public-private sector partnership for investment and equity in development and not another region. He said the desire for the creation of another region was misguided and lacked foresight.

Speaking to Ghana News Agency at Hohoe, Mr Okudzeto said once equity was achieved in the development of the region the call for another region would cease.

He noted that lack of development in the northern part of the region was due to lack of a master plan to promote sector-by-sector and district by district benchmark to meet development targets across the region.

Mr Okudzeto therefore advocated for the establishment of a council of eminent citizens from the region to dialogue regularly and fashion out development blueprint for the region, devoid of factional politics. He said a pressure group, which was established recently with oversight responsibility to lobby and tackle some of the region's developmental opportunities, was yielding dividends, such as the re-engineering of the Aveyime Rice Project by a strategic investor. Mr Okudzeto called on indigenes in the region to rationalize and redirect their investment and human capital into the developmental needs of the area as "the only option left towards changing the destiny of the region".