Deputy Minister for Local Government and Rural Development, Nii Lantey Vanderpuyie has advised Metropolitan, Municipal and District Chief Executives (MMDCEs) to make good use of their indigenous produce to create employment and a sustainable living for the people.
He said the time has come for people in our localities to make good use of what they produce, whether farm products, tourist attractions and others.
He cited Sege, near Ada, as one of the leading watermelon producing areas, but during bumper harvest, a lot of their produce deteriorates as a result of the unavailability of manufacturing companies which could turn the produce into refined products.
Nii Lantey Vanderpuyie said this at the just ended 1st annual international conference on developing local governance capacity to promote partnership and foster entrepreneurship, as well as international local governance conference held in Accra, which was organized by Praxis Africa for the players in local governance.
According to him, the maiden conference with the theme: “Empowering Local Economies through Education, Energy and Entrepreneurship in Ghana,” was a significant one as it represents the first international event on local governance and entrepreneurship.
He noted that the conference would go a long way to equip Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs) to deliver on their mandate and create the enabling environment for job opportunities to the youth in their respective areas.
Nii Lantey Vanderpuyie observed that, the vision of the Ministry is to achieve a sustainable and equitable economic growth through citizens’ participation in the decision making process and accelerated service delivery at the local level within a decentralized environment.
He added that, the Ministry’s core mandate hinges on four pillars, which was deepening the decentralization process and the empowerment of the district assemblies, promotion of small and micro enterprises’ development, promotion of the construction of affordable social housing and confronting the problem of environmental sanitation, saying in achieving that they intend to work hand in hand with experts from academia, professional bodies and allied institutions to design tailor made courses to equip capacities of members within the MMDAs.
He said, the initiative by Prasix Africa was a laudable one because; “challenges confronting the MMDAs are enormous and it is only an informed work force who can appropriately deal with the challenges to enable them deliver quality services to the youth at the local level and create the need jobs and wealth”.
He urged the participants to take the advantage given them by Praxis Africa to come up with strategies which will subsequently create jobs opportunities for the people within their jurisdictions.
The President of Praxis Strategy Group United States of America (USA), Mr. Delore Zimmerman, on his part asked participants to ponder on three questions; “what do we have that we can build on?, what do we need to put in place? And what are our best first and next steps?
He encouraged participants to go all out to implement knowledge acquired to develop strategies which would benefits their jurisdictions.
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