Help develop local capacity — Asantehene
The Asantehene, Otumfuo Osei Tutu II, has called on Ghana’s external development partners to go beyond the provision of physical projects in local communities and help build the capacity of the human resource to enable them generate wealth.
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He stressed that development partners should also support the nation with well-crafted capacity building programmes to strategically position local government officials to generate the needed revenue for development.
The Asantehene said this when the Mayor of Almere, a city in Holland, Mrs Annemarie Lebbink-Jorritsma, paid a courtesy call on him at the Manhyia Palace in Kumasi last Thursday.
The Mayor was in Kumasi to inspect a number of development projects that were funded by the Dutch government as part of the sister-city relationship between Almere and Kumasi.
She was accompanied by a Board Member of SamenWerk Foundation, Mrs Marianne Hop; Project Co-ordinator, SamenWerk Foundation, Mrs Pieter Van Der Linden, and the International Co-ordinator to Kumasi-Almere, Mr Paul Mulder.
Otumfuo Osei Tutu decried the situation where external development partners put up projects and left the natives to take over their management when the local people did not have the capacity to manage them well.
In that instance, most of the projects deteriorate in no time, a situation the Asantehene said defeated the purpose for which the projects were undertaken.
Otumfuo, however, welcomed the Almere-Kumasi relationship which, he noted, had impacted positively on the lives of the people, and said the doors of the Manhyia Palace were at all times opened for foreign nationals who sought for the development of the country.
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The mayor, for her part, expressed gratitude to the Asantehene for receiving the delegation, and prayed that the sister-city relation between the two cities would continue to bring development.
She called on non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and civil society organisations (CSOs) to help in the development of sanitation projects in the country.
She said government could not do it alone and that NGOs, CSOs and other individuals must partner in the development process through the initiation of sanitation projects to complement the effort of government.
The mayor and the delegation, as part of their activities, visited two refuse dumps at Atasomanso and Santasi and proceeded to the Sokoban Wood Village.
They also visited the King Faisal Islamic Basic School at Suame where Mrs Lebbink-Jorritsma inaugurated a six-seater toilet facility.
By Joseph Kyei-Boateng/Daily Graphic/Ghana