President Akufo Addo
President Akufo Addo has charged traditional authorities and residents in all border communities to expose all criminals who have made it their job to smuggle fertilizers meant for the Planting for Food and Jobs.
” It is not fair for a few people to smuggle what we all have used our money for. The fertilizers belong to all of us, it is the money of the farmer and the workers in the offices that these criminals have decided to direct into their pockets alone.”
The President was addressing the chiefs and people of the Kassena-Nankana Traditional Area on the second day of his tour of the Upper East Region.
He urged the people of the traditional area and the Upper East Region as a whole to take advantage of the Planting for Food and Jobs programme to improve on their food production and household incomes.
“The Planting for Food and Job Programme started with 200,000 people and today we are talking about 1 million beneficiaries and this is what we are doing to produce more food for our country. We deserve to be food sufficient and be able to feed ourselves from what we grow,” he said.
President Akufo Addo also called on traditional authorities and residents in the Upper East Region to support and corporate with Armed Forces personnel deployed to protect the various borders in the region, adding, “they are sacrificing their lives for our peace and the best we can do is to corporate with them and give them information to apprehend criminals who may want to cause trouble in our country.”
He promised that government will provide the needed equipment to ensure that the armed forces protect Ghana’s borders from intruders who may want to destabilize the country.
Earlier, the Minister of Education, Matthew Opoku Prempeh had called on the people in the area to ignore negative propaganda by the opposition against the implementation of the free SHS, saying the policy has come to stay.
According to the minister, the NPP government was committed to improving the education sector than they met it.
“We met capitation grant at GHc4.50 but now capitation grant is GHc10.00, the buses that were given to schools in 2016 were not paid for, the 50 SHS buildings the Mahama government said they built we even not completed as at 2017.”
FROM: Ebo Bruce-Quansah, Navrongo