Stakeholders meet on Greater Kumasi plan
The final Stakeholders Consultative meeting for the Greater Kumasi Sub-Regional Spatial Development Framework and Structure Plan has been held in Kumasi.
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Participants in the day’s workshop included chiefs, ministers of state, metropolitan, municipal and district chief executives and officials from the Town and Country Planning Department (TCPD).
It was held in partnership with the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), TCPD and the Ministry of Environment Science, Technology and Innovation (MESTI).
The Japanese Government is providing Ghana with technical assistance for the project, which is aimed at the formulation of a comprehensive urban development plan for Greater Kumasi, in accordance with the New Spatial Planning System for the Ashanti regional capital.
Under the project, studies were conducted in the Kumasi Metropolis and its seven surrounding districts of Afigya, Kwabre, Kwabre East, Ejisu-Juaben Municipality, Asokore Mampong, Bosomtwe, Atwima Kwanwoma and Atwima Nwabiagya, which are defined as the Greater Kumasi sub-region.
The Ashanti Regional Director of the TCPD, Mrs Rosamond Adusei, said the project would be in four phases—analysis of the present situation, setting of vision, formulating of basic development policies and spatial development framework.
According to her, when implemented, the Greater Kumasi will help the country to achieve its middle-income status by utilising its human and infrastructure resources.
The Ashanti Regional Minister, Mr Eric Opoku, said Kumasi undoubtedly played a significant role in the socio-economic development of the country in view of its central and strategic location.
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He added that any initiative that sought to consciously arrange development by integrating economic and social patterns in the metropolis and peri-urban districts around Kumasi required the attention and support of all patroitic Ghanaians.
He expressed the hope that the project would provide a strategy to decongest the city, generate formal, well-capitalised manufacturing businesses and designate a large urban growth boundary within which there would be growth in the next 20 years and beyond.
The Deputy Minister for Local Government and Rural Development, Mr Emmanuel Kwadwo Agyekum, said one of the most significant changes that had happened in Ghana since independence was the dramatic demographic shift from the rural to urban areas.
He said in 1960, the country was 80 per cent rural and 20 per cent urban but today, the urban had increased to over 52 per cent.
Mr Agyekum added that cities and towns were the crystallisation of human civilisation and urbanisation was an important part of modernisation.
He asked the MMDAs not to plan in isolation of one another but to rather come together to form joint planning boards as required by the local government ministry.
By Ernestina Kyerewaa Oppong