PARLIAMENT has passed a Legislative Instrument (LI) 1967 which indicates that a unit committee shall be equivalent to an electoral area in the country.
As a result, the number of unit committees in the country ( over 15,000), will be reduced to 5,000 to be at par with the number of electoral areas in the country for this year’s district level elections.
The Minister of Local Government and Rural Development, Mr Joseph Yieleh Chireh, announced this at a retreat organised by the Western Regional Coordinating Council (WRCC) for metropolitan, municipal and district chief executives, Members of Parliament, traditional rulers and heads of ministries, departments and agencies, as well as non-governmental organisations and private sector business representatives in the region at the Busua Beach Resort.
The three-day retreat was to examine the economic problems, explore opportunities in the region, help determine and shape the future of the region’s development, and also discuss how to partner the private sector, especially with regard to the oil and gas industry, to ensure harmonious regional development.
Mr Chireh said the first five people would be elected to form a unit committee after the elections and that there would be no government appointees on the unit committees.
He added that the Electoral Commission would pass a Constitutional Instrument (CI) to effect the changes.
He noted that publicity of the district-level elections was very low and stressed the need to intensify public education on the elections.
He said support was being sought from other agencies to assist the Electoral Commission and the National Commission for Civic Education to intensify public education on the elections and suggested that women should be encouraged to actively participate in the elections.
He stressed the need for constant dialogue and consultations between the metropolitan, municipal and district chief executives (MMDCEs) and Members of Parliament (MPs), as well as information sharing and mutual respect.
He said the MMDCEs and MPs were to move the development of the districts and constituencies forward and that this could be done when peace was promoted.
“You must be speaking with one voice when it comes to development and poverty reduction,” he said.
The Deputy Minister of Energy, Mr Emmanuel Kofi Armah Buah, said 865 communities in the Western Region were to benefit from electricity supply.
He explained that 67 per cent of communities in the country had access to electricity and that it was expected to increase to 80 per cent by 2015 and 100 per cent by 2020.
Mr Buah said currently, the power generation capacity of the country was 2,000 megawatts, while projection was 5,000 megawatts by 2015.
He said the Ministry of Energy, in collaboration with the Ministry of Trade and Industries, was to establish a small and medium-scale office in Takoradi to assist the private sector to take advantage of the emerging oil and gas industry.
He said the University of Mines and Technology in Tarkwa, the Takoradi Polytechnic and the Kikam Technical Institute were being assisted to offer petroleum related courses.
The Western Regional Minister, Mr Paul Evans Aidoo, noted that development was a shared responsibility and that it behoved all stakeholders, particularly the MPs and MMDCEs to be committed to the achievement of the agenda for developing their respective areas.
“We should not delude ourselves into thinking that because oil has been discovered in commercial quantities here our infrastructural challenges will be surmounted”, he stressed.
He emphasised that it was time for people in the region to discard their partisan cloaks and adopt a united approach to issues that confronted them as a people and demand what they deserved, adding “We need cooperation to meet the development aspirations of our people”.
The regional minister stressed the need to clearly define a distinctive direction for the region to spearhead its development agenda.
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