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The Ashanti Regional Zongo Caucus of the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) says the promised made the Presidential Candidate, Nana Akufo Addo to establish a Zongo Development Fund to boost the growth of these communities is a sham.

According to the Regional Communications Officer of the group, Awal Mohammed, it is not possible to trust the words of Nana Akufo Addo since his party, the NPP in eight in government failed to establish such development fund for the Zongo communities.

At NPP’s recent national NASARA conference organized 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.

But commenting on this promise, Awal Mohammed on Okay Fm’s Ade Akye Abia Morning Show insisted the NPP Presidential Candidate cannot do anything different from what President John Dramani Mahama is doing to help the Zongo communities.

“Throughout the eight years of the NPP in power, it could not boast of a single policy aimed at the development of Zongo communities with a Northerner as 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.

He said under the seven years of the NDC, Zongos, especially those in the Ashanti Region, had benefited from lots of development projects; thus most of the communities had tarred roads and almost every basic school under the Islamic Education unit across the country have new classroom blocks.

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 NPP's deceit.

“We will accept Akufo Addo’s promise of Zongo development fund if he had said he would continue from the good work of President Mahama in the Zongo communities;” fearing that the NPP Flagbearer's promise means he will abandon the ongoing projects by the current administration.