Rural urban migration, major cause of underdevelopment in the North - Chief

Niator, (U/W), Oct. 28, GNA - Kuoro Barecheh Nlowie Baninye II, Acting President of the Zini Traditional Council has attributed the underdevelopment of the Northern part of the country to the high level of migration of the youth from the area.

He stated that the success of every community was largely dependent on how willing and committed the youth were to the development of that community.

In an interview with the GNA on Wednesday, the Chief explained that the North had failed to develop because the youth which forms majority of the working population held the perception that there was little they could do to succeed here in the North.

Kuoro Baninye who is also the Niator Divisional Chief in the Sissala West District of the Upper West Region, said until the youth see the need to stay and contribute their quota towards the development of the area, the North would never develop even in the midst of adequate resources.

He said these days, one could barely count the number of young men and women in northern communities, stressing that they have all gone down South to engage in menial jobs.

This, he said, had rendered many families poorer as they lacked the ability to even farm to sustain them throughout the season not to talk about engaging in commercial farming.

He noted that all the development interventions being put in place by the government and civil society organisations in the North would be useless in the hands of only children and the aged.

He therefore pleaded with the youth to come home and take up farming which he believed would help to better their lots instead of engaging in menial jobs in the South.

Kuoro Baninye commended government's effort in trying to create opportunities in the North in order to bring them home but pleaded for more seriousness to be attached to the issue of the migrating youth as it was very crucial to the development of the area.

He called on parents and families who had their people doing menial jobs in the South to put in efforts to bring them home, pointing out that they would rather be of greater help to them at home than remaining down South.

GNA