<<Print>>

The Ashanti Regional Zongo Caucus of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) has asked the Zongo Community to disregard the promise made by the flag bearer of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) of establishing a Zongo Development Fund to boost the growth of these communities.

At its recent national NASARA conference organised in Kumasi, the flag bearer of the NPP, Nana Akufo-Addo, pledged to establish a special fund called Zongo Development Fund to address the infrastructural development of the Zongo community and also to improve the lives of the residents.

Addressing a press conference here in Kumasi, the Regional Communications Officer of the group, Awal Mohammed, said throughout the eight years of the NPP in power, it could not boast a single policy aimed at the development of Zongo with a northern vice president.

“We see the so called Zongo Development Fund as a sham and a calculated attempt to swindle the unsuspecting zongo voter,” he said.

Projects under NDC

He said under the seven years of the NDC, Zongos, especially those in the Ashanti Region, had benefited from lots of development projects.

He said most of the communities had tarred roads and almost every basic school under the Islamic Education unit across the country “have new classroom blocks.”

And for the first time, he said, senior high schools within the Zongo communities had been adopted and expanded.

He cited the cases of Sakafia, Azhariya, Tijaniya, and Taweed SHS.

LEAP

According to Mr Awal, many of the beneficiaries of the Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP) were under-privileged elders from Zongo and more than 12,000 head porters (kayayei), who are mostly found in the Zongos, had been registered with the National Health Insurance Scheme for free to enable them to have access to free health care.

These and other projects currently going on in the Zongo communities, he said, showed that the NDC had the Zongos more at heart than the NPP and asked the electorate to read through the cunning of the NPP.