Home POLITICS Only enemy of Zongos will scrap Ministry – Saddique

Only enemy of Zongos will scrap Ministry – Saddique

The Minister for Inner Cities and Zongo Development, Mr Boniface Abubakar Saddique, has cautioned that whichever political party that comes after the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) should not make the mistake of scrapping the Ministry.

“Whichever party that comes into office and scraps the ministry, believe you me, is the enemy of the Zongos,” he declared.

Mr Boniface Saddique made the declaration at separate stakeholder consultation meetings at Bawku and Bolgatanga, last Sunday, to seek inputs to the proposed Zongo Development Fund Draft Bill.

He said the Zongo Development Fund and ministry had come to stay and stay for good.

Alhaji Boniface Abubakar Saddique addressing the stakeholders at Bawku

Not political rhetoric

He said the promise of the NPP to create the Zongo Development Fund during the 2016 election campaign was not an attempt to deceive the people in the Zongo communities to vote for them neither was it a political rhetoric.

He said it was born out of genuine concern for those communities which were marginalised and excluded from the development of the country.

He said since pre-independence, development had been skewed and discriminatory towards other areas to the neglect of the Zongo communities.

He added that because of these, the Zongos had been bedevilled by high levels of poverty, jumbled housing settings, insanitary conditions, youth unemployment and high crime rates.

“The current state of the Zongos reflect a major developmental challenge manifesting in poverty, illiteracy, disease, poor housing conditions, high level of social and economic vulnerability and limited prosperity,” he emphasised.

He said the President felt the Zongo communities were excluded from the development of the country and must be included, hence the creation of the Ministry for Inner Cities and Zongo Development.

Seed money

He said both the ministry and the Zongo Development Fund had come to stay as government had already allocated a seed money of GH¢219 million in the 2017 budget and a bill was being drafted to be sent to cabinet and then to Parliament for consideration and approval.

He added that any government that came to power would find it difficult to scrap the ministry and the fund.

He said upon the passage of the bill that established the Zongo Development Fund, the necessary disbursement would be made and applied to eligible programmes and projects outlined in the ministry’s 2017 action plan.

He said the ministry was mandated to ensure that they helped make the Zongo communities safe, resilient, humanly accepted and a sustainable human settlement for people to live in.

In connection with this, he further explained that the key areas that the ministry had targeted for this year in their action plan included infrastructural enhancement and sanitation, economic empowerment, social development, cultural promotion and security and crime control.

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