DEVELOPMENT BLUE PRINT FOR WESTERN REGION (PAGE 22, OCT 8, 2010)

THREE years ago, April 2007 to be precise, the Western Regional Co-ordinating Council (WRCC) came out with a final draft document known as “Development Blue Print”, a growth strategy for the Western Region.
Between September 6 and 8, 2007, officials of the regional co-ordinating council, some paramount chiefs and opinion leaders, as well as Members of Parliament in the region met at a consultative forum on the draft “Development Blue Print” at the Busua Beach Resort to discuss and adopt the document to facilitate the rapid socio-economic development of the region.
The document identified a growth strategy from a number of options for the sustainable development of the region.
The development objectives addressed by the document were derived from broad sectorial targets and growth rates within the framework of poverty alleviation, income and employment generation.
It also highlighted the development of the major sub-sectors of the socio-economic infrastructure, namely roads, education, health, electricity, water, telecommunication and industry as the lead- sectors for growth and development in the following two years.
The main purpose of the document was to address those areas of intervention which had emerged as common constraints to all the districts in the region in the analysis of their development problems.
The poor conditions of roads, coupled with the poor coverage and unreliable energy, telecommunication system and others, have been identified as serious bottlenecks and deterrents to investments in all sectors of the economy of the region, while the socio-economic uplift is slow.
A critical analysis has revealed that for the region to achieve accelerated progress in the short-term, there is the need to mount a crash programme to develop the road networks, education, health, energy, water sectors and telecommunication system.
The regional co-ordinating council believed that the development of those critical areas would propel the wheel of development of the region.
It also believed that the development of an effective road network would open up the region.This would give greater impetus to investors to invest for more intensive exploitation and utilisation of enormous resources, improve education that would provide the needed skilled manpower and further enhance the people’s participation in the development of the region, improve health, water and energy to improve the living standards of the people in the area.
The main objectives of the document were to develop and maintain a number of priority trunk and feeder roads throughout the region, to improve the educational infrastructure and manpower of the primary and junior high school levels in the region.
They were also aimed at extending electricity to some communities that have not been covered, improve the health infrastructure, reduce child mortality and improve maternal health and also provide good health for all people in the region.
According to the executive summary of the document, the proposed areas would entail a huge capital outlay that was likely to put a heavy burden on the already over-stretched resources of the government.
However, it stated that the regional co-ordinating council recommended for the government’s consideration, a strategy by which the bulk of the annual capital budgetary allocations for the sectors of the regional economy would be channelled into financing the proposed short-term crash programme.
The programme was expected to be implemented by the metropolitan, municipal and district assemblies in the region with the regional co-ordinating council playing a monitoring and co-ordinating role.
The irony of the situation is that the laudable document, which the representatives of people in the region had contributed to, never saw the light of the day since it was never implemented.
Nothing had been heard about it even though time, money and energy was spent to ensure its final development, with the hope that it would be implemented to transform the region which is lagging behind in physical development.
The Blue Print captured the profile, situation and potentials of the Western Region which depicted its resources, which could be harnessed to improve the living conditions of the people.
It also captured the development challenges that made the region lags behind in terms of human and natural resources and infrastructure development, as well as the way forward to final solutions, modalities and mechanisms for development of the numerous economic potentials of the area.
The chiefs and people in the region have been complaining bitterly that in spite of the region’s contribution to the national economy, it is the least developed region in the country.
Therefore, it was expected that for once, the chiefs, RCC officials, Members of Parliament, metropolitan, municipal and the district chief executives would ensure the effective implementation of the “Development Blue Print” document since it was their brainchild and would not let it go waste.
It is, therefore, very important for the people who were behind the development of the document, particularly the regional co-ordinating council, to revisit the document if possible, to ensure the rapid socio-economic, as well as the physical transformation of the region.