Issah Alhassan
11 August 2008
Kumasi — AS CAMPAIGN for the country's highest office gets hotter with barely five months to go for the elections, Civil Societies and Institutions continue to engage leaders of the various political parties on their visions and programmes on various aspects of the country's development.
The latest to join is the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), which on Thursday provided the platform for political parties to spell out their policies, and was organised by the Bureau of Integrated Rural Development (BIRD), the department in-charge of rural development studies.
The forum, being the second to be organised by the University, saw flag bearers and representatives of five political parties, including the NPP, NDC, CPP, PNC and DFP, laid out their policies and programmes aimed at improving the socio-economic lives of the people living in the rural communities, if elected into power.
The flag bearer of the ruling New Patriotic Party, Nana Addo Dankwah Akufo-Addo, whose speech was read on his behalf by the National Campaign Director of the NPP 2008 Campaign team, Dr.Kofi Konadu Appraku, stated that the next government of the NPP would pursue policies on integrated rural development using agriculture, education, infrastructure, industry and decentralisation as the pivots.
He said the NPP would be seeking to alleviate poverty amongst the rural poor to the barest minimum through improved access to quality education, and the provision of special allowances and study leave to teachers in rural areas, while decentralising education to offer maximum local control over financing of education.
Dr. Appraku noted that in line with the NPP government's laudable policies which have seen poverty in rural areas reduce from 51.7% percent in 2000 to 28.5% in 2005, Nana Akufo-Addo had pledged to ensure by the end of his first term in office, a minimum of 30% of all students entering public universities would come from rural senior high schools, while sustaining the Free Compulsory Universal Basic Education (FCUBE) programme, by increasing the capitation grant, expanding the school feeding programme, building more schools, training and re-training teachers.
Dr. Appraku also said the next NPP government under Nana Akufo-Addo would improve the lives of rural folks in agriculture through building and rehabilitation projects, deepen private sector support services to the agricultural sector and cutting down post harvest losses by building silos for storage to ensure food sufficiency and construction of small dams and irrigation systems to ensure an all year round farming in the country.
"Nana Akufo-Addo has proposed the establishment of a one billion dollar industrial fund to provide access to capital, to support small scale industries, review Export Development and Investment Fund (EDIF) and encourage banks through legislative incentives to allocate significant proportion of their loan portfolio to small and medium enterprises", he stated.
He further noted that the next NPP government would improve road networks in the rural communities to enhance domestic trade, invest heavily in rural tourism and strengthen the capacity of local government units as well as the chieftaincy Institution to become agents for effective development.
The flag bearer of the CPP, Dr. Paa Kwesi Nduom took participants at the forum down memory lane, when he re-echoed the first President of Ghana, Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah's first broadcast to the nation, when he stated that "We shall measure our progress by the improvement in the health of our people; by the number of children in school, and electricity in our towns and villages and by the happiness which our people take in being able to manage their own affairs. The welfare of our people is our chief pride, and it is by this that my Government will ask to be judged."
Dr.Nduom said it was by that commitment that the CPP government hoped to ensure the integrated development of all rural areas in Ghana from North to South, East to West. He said the CPP government's rural development policy would be based on three key objectives including raising agricultural productivity and transforming agriculture from subsistence to modern market oriented paradigm, increase rural infrastructure to support industrial capacity to process crops with comparative advantage and strong market demand and enhance autonomy of local government to empower rural communities to generate their own growth.
"The CPP shall guide the transformation of those areas from deprived communities to well-developed ones by providing them with a wide array of infrastructure such as modern roads, electricity, irrigation systems and medical facilities to facilitate both agricultural and non-agricultural activities", he noted.
The flag bearer of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), Prof.J.E.Attah Mills on his part bemoaned the continuous widening of income and socio-economic gap between the urban and rural dwellers, stressing that sustainable development could only take place when the livelihoods of majority of the populace who live in the rural areas were improved.
Represented at the forum by the MP for Asawase, Hon. Muntaka Mubarak, the NDC flag bearer said the party when voted into power, would ensure a revolution in the agricultural sector by making it very attractive to the rural dwellers. He said the NDC would address policy constraints such as absence of land use policy, inadequate investment in agriculture by government, over-reliance on donor funding, ineffective monitoring of on-going projects and poorly co-coordinated agricultural and trade policies.
He said an NDC government will also add a comprehensive policy framework which takes into consideration institutional, infrastructural dimension, transportation system, education and financial and weather/environmental factors to be adopted to serve as a guideline to ensure the uplift of the rural dwellers. He said the government of NDC would continue its rural electrification programme to connect Villages to the national grid and also ensure access to credit facilities for small scale businesses in the rural areas.
The flag bearer of the Democratic Freedom Party (DFP), Mr. Emmanuel Ansah-Antwi also pledged to institute measures aimed at cushioning the youth who would go into agricultural production to make it more attractive to them. He said the DFP would address the rural -urban development gap by ensuring adequate provision of social incentives such as electricity, potable water and improve road access to facilitate businesses of rural dwellers.
The Acting Director of the Bureau of Integrated Rural Development (BIRD), Dr. Paul Sarfo Mensah, in an interview with The Chronicle said the forum would provide the opportunity to assess the various policies spelled out by the flag bearers so that a legal and coherent policy framework on rural development could be drawn out for the implementation of successive governments.
He said currently there was no clear cut policy on how governments can develop rural communities in the country adding the BIRD was in collaboration with the Local Government Ministry to prepare a comprehensive framework on rural development which would serve as guideline for all governments in the country.
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