Major development partners are hesitant to launch new initiatives, projects, or allocate funding to areas near the Bawku Municipality. Due to the conflict, other development partners are progressively reducing their initial assistance for the districts surrounding the Bawku Municipality.
The worrying phenomenon, according to the Upper East Regional Coordinating Council, is because of the protracted conflict in the Bawku area.
“If you look at the conflict in Bawku, apart from the municipality itself suffering the brunt of the effect, in the adjourning districts, the donors feel unsafe to visit some of the communities there.”
Alhaji Abubakar Inusah, the Chief Director at the Upper East Regional Coordinating Council, made this revelation when he spoke to Mark Smith on A1 Radio’s Day Break Upper East Show.
The development, according to Alhaji Inusah, has put the Upper East Regional Minister, Stephen Yakubu, under immense pressure.
“The Minister has a hell of a task explaining to the donors that the conflict is within a limited area and has not spread out to the other districts, especially the UN donor funding agencies. The Minister has explained to them, but anytime we assure them that maybe, for the past 3 or 4 months, nothing has happened so the situation is stable, then the following day, something happens, derailing all the efforts we are making to ensure that people benefit from these interventions,” he said.
Alhaji Inusah pleaded with the people of Bawku to bury the hatchet and allow the area to develop.
“We want to use this forum to appeal to the people that, for the sake of the vulnerable population—the women, children, and the elderly—they should lay down their arms and let us build a society in which the aged, the women, and the children would live comfortably and contribute their quota to the development of their communities,” he said.
Source: A1radioonline.com|101.1MHz|Mark Kwasi Ahumah Smith|Ghana
