By Godfred A. Polkuu, GNA
Nalerigu (NE/R) June 26, GNA – Mr Zakaria Yidana, the North-East Regional Minister says he will encourage a healthy and effective collaboration between his office and stakeholders in the Region to ensure rapid development and improvement in the livelihood of the people.
He said there was the need for the young Region to move rapidly in development to catch up with older Regions that were far advanced, and entreated all stakeholders in the Region to support its development agenda.
“In order to progress rapidly and move the Region out of poverty and deprivation, I have initiated a process of establishing a centre to be known as the North-East Regional Centre for Integrated Development,” he said.
He explained that the Centre would identify and engage think-tanks with high expertise across all disciplines with the sole aim to harness local, national and international resources to support the implementation of short to long-term development plans across the Region within the framework of development policies.
“The Centre will focus on strategies for rapid socio-economic, environmental, tourism, and cultural development of the North-East Region. I urge all sons and daughters to lend their support to this vision and make it come to reality.”
Mr Yidana said this when he addressed a durbar of Chiefs at Nalerigu, on the progress of development in some key sectors in the Region.
Touching on some development projects in the Region, the Minister, who is a former Assistant Registrar of the Tamale Campus of the University for Development Studies (UDS), cited the ongoing construction work of the Regional Coordinating Council building was progressing at a fast rate.
“We also have ongoing construction of a Circuit Court and the National Health Insurance project as well as many road projects in the North East Region,” he noted.
Mr Yidana said as part of efforts to improve the quality of education in the Region, there would be stakeholder fora of Chiefs, people in academia and Non-Governmental Organizations, to help them fix the challenges in the educational sector in the Region.
On Agriculture, the Minister said there was an improvement in the distribution of subsidized fertilizers to farmers in 2019 and 2020.
He said a total of 70, 614 bags of subsidized fertilizers were distributed to farmers in 2019, while a total of 217,780 bags were distributed in 2020 under the ‘Planting for Food and Jobs (PFJ) programme.
He noted, the distribution subsequently increased maize and rice production from 102, 047 metric tonnes in 2020 as against 63,675 metric tonnes in 2019, and was hopeful that the fertilizer subsidy would be maintained.
