Vice President, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, has said the New Patriotic Party’s Zongo Development Fund initiative, was inspired by the late former Vice President, Alhaji Aliu Mahama.
According to him, the late vice president had Ghanaians living in the Zongos at heart, and thus suggested a social intervention programme to address their developmental needs.
Speaking at an event to mark the 5th anniversary of Aliu Mahama’s passing, Dr. Bawumia said the former vice President made the proposal as a way of defusing the propaganda being peddled at the time, that the New Patriotic Party (NPP) was against people from the Northern and Zongo communities.
[contextly_sidebar id=”IGRnU69F7evnRRB6ArzALXsq7kDRW9qd”]“We see him [Aliu Mahama] as a pioneer as far as our politics is concerned. As Vice President to President Kufuor, he brought something unique to the table. He straddled the zongo and northern communities. The story of the Zongo Development fund was started with Alhaji Aliu Mahama.”
“We were talking and he said, we have to do things to let the Zongos appreciate that the NPP is not anti-Zongo as the propaganda was at the time. We said what can we do, and we started talking about specific interventions because successive governments had not paid attention to the zongos. So that is why when we brought that suggestion to Nana Akufo-Addo he immediately said that it is a good idea, let us put it in the manifesto, and today by the grace of God, we are establishing the Zongo Development Fund,” he added.
The Zongo Development Fund Bill was approved last week by Parliament.
It was approved together with the Northern Development Authority (NDA), another social intervention initiative captured in the NPP’s 2016 manifesto.
The Zongo Development Fund bill seeks to establish the legal framework for the implementation of the Zongo Development Fund.
Government has allocated $50 million dollars to the Fund for the improvement of Zongo communities in the country.
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By: Godwin Akweiteh Allotey/citifmonline.com/Ghana
Follow @AlloteyGodwin