Govt asked to fulfil campaign promise : To create more regions
The Paramount Chief of the Mamprugu Traditional Area, Nayiri Naa Bohagu Mahami Abdulai Sheriga, has appealed to the government to make good its campaign promise of creating another region out of the Northern Region.
According to him, the Northern Region is the largest region in the country and the creation of another out of it is long overdue.
He also appealed to the government to make Nalerigu the capital of the new region.
The Nayiri made the appeal when the Vice-President, Alhaji Dr Mahamudu Bawumia, paid a courtesy call on him at his palace at Nalerigu on day three of his “thank you” tour of the Northern Region last Saturday.
Nalerigu is the seat of the Mamprugu Traditional Area.
The Nayiri commended the government for its vision to create new regions in the country.
During the 2016 electioneering, the New Patriotic Party (NPP) promised to create four additional regions from the existing ones when voted into power, and the Northern Region is one of them.
The Nayiri, therefore, appealed through the Vice-President to the President to create a new region out of the Northern Region and make Nalerigu the capital of that region.
Roads
The Nayiri also appealed to the government to complete the tarring of the Nalerigu roads to befit the status of a traditional capital.
He said the construction of the town roads linking other communities within the Mamprugu traditional area would also help prevent the perennial flooding experienced in some of the communities during the rainy season.
"The project has come to a standstill and whenever it rains, water gushes into the homes of the residents, posing sanitation and related problems to the inhabitants," he said.
The Nayiri added that the Nalerigu-Nakpanduri also needed attention as well as the Gbintri road, which is a major economic road that links the communities in Mamprugu and beyond to the Gbintri market.
He further called on the government to complete the construction of the road linking Nalerigu to Tamale (the Northern regional capital) to enable farmers to cart their farm produce to the market centres.
Water
He appealed for the expansion of the Nalerigu water supply system to cover all communities in the Mamprugu area, saying the current water coverage in the Mamprugu area is 50 per cent and “we want the coverage to be increased to 100 per cent to provide potable water to our people who drink from unhygienic sources and also to address the acute water shortage experienced in the Mamprugu area during the dry season.”
Limestone
The Nayiri stated that the district was endowed with limestone deposits at Gbanda that could be mined in commercial quantities to generate revenue for other development projects.
He, therefore, appealed to the government to establish a cement factory that would mine the natural resource.
That, the Nayiri said, would not only help to achieve the ‘one-district, one-factory’ policy of the government but would also create job opportunities for the teeming unemployed youth in the area and Ghana as a whole.