General News of Friday, 28 December 2018
Source: Graphic.com.gh
2018-12-28
Minister of Regional Reorganisation, Dan Botwe
The Minister of Regional Reorganisation, Dan Botwe has said that the next stage of the regional reorganisation process was a decision on where to locate regional capitals for the new areas.
Speaking to some journalists at Jasikan in the Oti area after the declaration of the results on Friday, Mr Botwe said with support from technocrats, the next decision was where the capitals should be located and that would be taken now that the proposers of the new regions have succeeded in getting their regions.
“We met the stakeholders, we met the chiefs, they discussed it, and they said that they will all wait because this is something they have been fighting for decades, it was their forefathers wish that they have such a thing.”
“So they will fight for this one [referendum first], we’ve gone through the process and they have succeeded in getting their regions. The next stage of regional capitals and other considerations will be put together, we will get support from the technocrats and take a decision,” he said.
“He said the petitions were led by chiefs, opinion leaders, leadership of the youth groups and this is something they themselves discussed among themselves, and so the next stage was for other considerations and input from technocrats on where to locate regional capitals.
Mr Botwe expressed delight that government was able to go through the constitutional requirements for the creation of the new regions.
“The issue is not the YES or NO. For us, following the constitutional process, creating the necessary platform and linkages and working together with all stakeholders until this stage…that is what we are satisfied with. It is not whether people voted ‘YES’ or ‘NO’, he said.
“It is the fact that we followed the constitutional process diligently and created the necessary platform for everybody and they were able to vote and express themselves. That is what we were looking for, so the success on the part of government is not that everybody voted YES, but the fact that we were able to complete the processes using the constitutional requirement,” he added.