Minister holds maiden meeting with heads of departments
The Upper East Regional Minister, Mr Albert Abongo, has said he will rely on the technical expertise of heads of departments to fashion out development programmes for the region.
Advertisement
"As technical and experienced people, let us see ourselves as a family working together to alleviate age-old poverty, ignorance and disease that have plagued our people," he stated at his maiden meeting with heads of departments at the Upper East Regional Coordinating Council (RCC).
Mr Abongo, therefore, charged the departmental heads to be innovative and creative in finding ways to execute their mandate.
Middle income status
Mr Abongo said Ghana’s attainment of middle income status was drawing away development partners to less endowed economies.
“This explains why as a nation, we need to widen the tax net and also be ingenious in finding alternative means of administering our productive sectors,” he reminded the heads of departments.
Mr Abongo, who assured the heads of operating an open-door policy, said he intended to institutionalise quarterly meetings with the heads of departments and to ensure they participated effectively in activities of the (RCC).
Decentralisation reforms
He said the RCC would be briefing them from time to time on the roll-out of the decentralisation reforms and the role each of them was expected to play.
He said the country was in an election year and much would be expected of them in ensuring peace before, during and after the elections and cautioned them as civil servants to exhibit professionalism by remaining neutral.
Cases of cholera
The Upper East Regional Director of the Ghana Health Service, Dr Issah Kofi , said with the onset of the rains, the region risked recording cases of cholera due to rampant open defaecation.
He said the region had also started recording cases of anthrax and blamed this on the lifestyle of the people, and indicated most of those infectious diseases were preventable.
He said the Regional Health Directorate was going to embark on a health screening exercise by visiting workplaces to check the sugar level, blood pressure (BP) and body mass index (BMI) of workers and explained that most people were sick without knowing it.
GBC off air
Responding to a question as to why Ghana Television had gone off air in the region for some weeks now, the Upper East Regional Director of the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation, Madam Asibi Banguu-Ekellah, said it was due to financial constraints.
She said the station was owing the Volta River Authority GH¢25,000 and had managed to pay GH¢10,000, leaving a balance of GH¢ 15,000.
She said the GH¢5,000 worth of electricity credit they bought could only operate their transmitter for seven days, which they could not sustain.
She said the imprest that was given from the headquarters was used to fuel their vehicles, plus other expenses, and called for the imprest to be increased or the headquarters to take responsibility for the payment of their electricity bills.