The commitment of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) government to construct a domestic airport in the Upper East Region when re-elected by Ghanaians on December 7, is being questioned.
President Akufo Addo during his address at a durbar of Chiefs and people of Paga and Chiana in the Kassena-Nankana West District of the Upper East Region to climax his two-day tour of the region reiterated his government’s earlier promise to construct an airport for the people of region.
He said a technical team had been put in place to consider and make recommendations on the most suitable place to site an airport for the region, between the two proposed locations; Paga in the Kassena-Nankana West District and Sherigu in the Bolgatanga Municipality.
“Very soon that technical team will be coming up here, and looking at the situation, the appropriateness, fitness, the security implications of having an airport here in Paga, close to the Burkina Faso border and also the possibility of one in the Bolga area.” He said.
But reacting to this on Day Break Upper East on A1 Radio, A Social Commentator and Executive Director of Northern Patriots for Research and Advocacy (NORPRA), Bismark Adongo Ayorogo questioned the plan and wondered how government was going to fund the project.
According to him, the President and by extension, the NPP government’s failure to list the construction of Upper East Regional Airport in its 2020 Elections Manifesto shows a lack of commitment towards fulfilling the promise of providing an airport in the region.
Mr. Ayorogo said “He {the president} has no plan for us; because in their manifesto, they don’t have anything by way of airport or airstrip for the people of the Upper East Region.”
He therefore charged Traditional Authorities particularly in the northern regions to channel their energies into demanding from government a fair share of developmental projects for their people; rather than engaging themselves in what he described as joining the campaign wagon in active partisan politics.
As part of his submission, Stanley Akamiri Abopam, A Social Commentator and Former Public Relations Officer for BONABOTO, expressed worry over the decision to abandon an initially proposed site for the construction of the airport at Anateem, a community at Sumbrungu, suburb of the Bolgatanga Municipality.
Source: A1Radioonline.com|101.1MHZ|Ghana
