Micro-credit not cola for beneficiaries - Alhaji Mahama

Beneficiaries of government's pro-poor interventions such as the micro-credit facility should not be seen as cola for them but a credit to enable them to improve their social and economic lives, which needed to be paid back for other people to benefit.

Alhaji Aliu Mahama, Vice President gave the advice at Brifo in the Lawra District when he paid a courtesy call on Naa Naabomo Gandaa IV, a Divisional Chief in the Lawra Traditional Area.

He said under the Micro-Finance Project, credit for clients has improved and one could now access between ¢500, 000 to ¢250 million and urged beneficiaries to use such money profitable to reduce poverty, which has impeded the socio-economic development of the people.

Alhaji Mahama on behalf of President John Agyekum Kufuor and the NPP government congratulated Naa Gandaa IV on his outdooring as chief of Brifo on April 7 this year.

He urged the people of the area to cooperate with him to enable him to implement his development agenda, especially in the area of education and agriculture. He said: “Education is the greatest tool that we can use to help reduce poverty, disease, ignorance and hunger in the North".

He said poverty reduction was among the cardinal goals of the government's development agenda and that a lot would be done about irrigation to support farmers in the area to use the water in the Black Volta to crop twice in a year.

Alhaji Mahama called on the Lawra District Assembly to provide water-pumping machines for the youth on credit to enable them to undertake dry season gardening to stop them from drifting to the southern parts of the country for white-colour jobs.

Naa Gandaa IV appealed to the government to consider establishing a senior secondary school to cater for the large numbers of junior secondary school students in the area while efforts were made to put a bridge on a river between Biro and Gombile, which has been claiming lives of school children and people.

He called the Lawra District Assembly, the Ministry of Tourism and Diasporan Relations to develop the "Spring Stone" in Brifo to attract tourists into the area to generate money for the local people.

Source: GNA