PNC determined to capture four seats in Upper East
The Upper East Regional Executive of the People's National Convention (PNC) are determined to capture at least four seats in this year's general election.
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At the moment, the PNC has one seat in the Builsa South district and the executive are leaving no stone unturned to retain that seat and capture the Chiana-Paga, Talensi and Bolgatanga Central seats.
The Regional Secretary of the PNC, Mr Albert Adongo, told the Daily Graphic in an interview last Thursday that “the party is seriously working to capture those seats."
He indicated that they were conducting their campaign on the quiet without the involvement of the media for now, while waiting for the party's manifesto to be launched and then they would launch their activities.
Mr Adongo observed that those four seats in the region constituted fertile grounds for the PNC to make inroads in the region, saying "the people are complaining that both the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) and the New Patriotic Party(NPP) have not brought any meaningful development to them."
According to him, the support base of these two parties — the NDC and the NPP, is huge but it does not commensurate with the level of development in the region.
He stated for instance that the Zuarungu Meat and Pwalugu Tomato factories had still not been revamped and the agricultural sector was also not yielding the positive results needed and added that youth unemployment was also worsening by the day.
Revamping Agric
Mr Adongo intimated that a PNC government, under Dr Edward Mahama, would make sure the agricultural sector was made attractive for the youth to venture into it by supporting them with credit facilities and then developing a lot of irrigation facilities to promote dry season farming.
He noted that when those measures were put in place, it would ultimately create more job opportunities for the youth and help reduce poverty in the region.
The regional secretary was also of the view that the region had a comparative advantage in the cultivation of groundnuts in large quantities but investment in that area was still low, but a PNC government would promote the export of groundnuts and also process the produce into other products such as groundnut oil, paste and others for exports.
Elect DCEs
Touching on the local governance system, Mr Adongo supported the view that district chief executives (DCEs) must be elected to make them more accountable to the people and avoid partisan politics at the grass roots to bring about meaningful development.
"A DCE who performs well would be voted again by the people but the one that does not perform to the satisfaction of the people would be voted out," he further stressed.