SADA not for rolling out jobs – CEO
Alhaji Gilbert Iddi, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Savanna Accelerated Development Authority (SADA), has reminded civil society groups and critics that the organization was not established to roll out white collar jobs to job seekers.
He said SADA was rather mandated to play a facilitating role with other sectors of the economy to reduce poverty levels in the northern savannah ecological areas of the country.
Alhaji Iddi said this at a three-day meeting of Regional Ministers of five regions, namely, Upper West, Upper East, Northern, Brong-Ahafo and Volta regions at Wa, on Tuesday, to deliberate on the SADA project.
All the Regional Ministers attended the meeting except the Volta and Brong-Ahafo Regional Ministers, who were represented by their deputies.
Alhaji Iddi and other Officials of SADA took turns to apprise the Regional Ministers of developments and challenges affecting the implementation of their programmes since the last meeting, which was held at Bolgatanga in the Upper East region in May 2013.
He announced that the Board of SADA had decided that the 270 tractors which were currently ploughing for farmers during this farming season would be distributed direct to beneficiaries during the next farming season.
The CEO of SADA called for modalities to guide the distribution of the tractors to the 62 SADA beneficiary districts in the five regions.
SADA was also engaging with wider sector groups such as the Ministry of Agriculture to integrate its plans to their policies to promote integrated sustainable development.
Dr Mustapha Ahmed, Minister of State, in charge of Development Authorities at the office of the President, said SADA had signed memorandums of understanding with many companies to scale up its intervention programmes, especially in the area of solar-powered irrigation systems and sugar cane production.
He advised the authority to play a facilitating role in the execution of the Tamale airport and the proposed Wa airport construction projects.
SADA should serve as a catalyst in speeding up development programmes in its beneficiary communities, he added.
Dr Ephraim Avea Nsor, the Upper West regional Minister urged SADA to manage resources in a way that would not damage the objectives of the organization.
He thanked the SADA officials for the hard work they were putting in to achieve the goals of the programme.
Dr Nsor however, advised that they must welcome all criticisms because that was one of the ways they could deliver efficiently.
For SADA to succeed, all institutions, units and structures within it must work and if that happened, it would be different from failed projects like URADEP and NORIP, he stated.
Source: GNA