Govt asked to establish royal college

Ho, Aug. 16, GNA - Togbega Gabusu VI, President of the Volta Regional House of Chiefs on Monday reiterated the call on government to establish a royal college as soon as possible to upgrade chiefs for the effective administration of the country.

He also called for the organisation of refresher courses for chiefs and to resource all traditional councils for the institution to play its constitutional given role effectively.

Togbega Gabusu made the call during an opened forum at a sensitisation workshop on Community-Based Rural Development Project (CBRDP) for 50 traditional leaders in the region at Ho, which he chaired.

He said the chieftaincy institution had remained a potential force in the administration of every country without which no government could succeed.

Togbega Gabusu said being at the grass root with the people and as the custodians of the land, there was no policy they could not help implement or issue they could not resolve, if not politicised by politicians.

He, therefore, urged the government to always consider the institution as a development partner and resource it as such, for socio-economic and peaceful development of the country. Mr Abraham Odoom, Deputy Minister of Local Government and Rural Development underscored the importance of traditional leaders to community driven development as implicated in the CBRDP.

He commended chiefs whose actions and inactions qualified the institution to be awarded the much recognition as stakeholders of CBRDP to reduce poverty and create wealth for the communities in consonance with the Ghana Poverty Reduction Strategy (GPRS).

Mr Odoom however, expressed disappointment about situations where some chiefs allowed "indiscipline" to characterise their administration and called for some chieftaincy titles to be streamlined to safe the institution's image.

Mr Odoom urged chiefs to use their influence on the people as custodians of the land to convince their subjects to register with the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS).

Mr Kofi Dzamesi, Volta Regional Minister called on traditional leaders to take the opportunities offered by the project to ensure that rural communities derived maximum benefits from it.

He, therefore, implored them to take pragmatic steps to galvanise and mobilise available human, material and financial resources to complement government efforts for a successful project implementation. CBRDP is about rural poverty reduction and capacity building for effective local government system.

It aims at improving the quality of life of Ghana's rural communities through increased transfer of technical and financial resources for the development of basic rural infrastructure that can be sustained by beneficiaries.

Its target beneficiaries include the rural communities, District Assemblies and the Area Councils among other private organisations.