Naba Roland Atogumdeya Akwara III, the Paramount Chief of the Sirigu Traditional area in the Kassena-Nankana West District of the Upper East Region, says the unresolved land dispute between Doba and Kandiga is retarding development in the area.
He said huge sums of money, which could have been used to undertake development projects to improve the livelihoods of the people had been spent on the security of the area and it was worrying.
He said they were all one family since they inter-married and therefore appealed to the feuding factions including the chiefs and people of Doba and Kandiga to embrace peace, to ensure sustainable development.
The Paramount Chief said this at the annual walk of Sirigu which brought together a lot of community members and the nearby communities including Doba and Kandiga.
The conflict was because of ownership of a piece of land on which a police post and Community-based Health Planning Services compound were to be constructed.
Naba Akwara III said anytime he drew the attention of the District Assembly to the development needs of the people, he was always told that all the resources had been spent on the Doba-Kandiga conflict.
He said many of the bridges in the area particularly Kandiga -Sirigu Bridge, Sirigu-Zorko Bridge, Paga-Sirigu Bridge, and the Bolgatanga-Sirigu Bridge had all collapsed cutting off most of the communities.
He appealed to the factions to consider the development of the area and to see themselves as one people and use dialogue instead of violence to resolve their differences.
He told the factions to be mindful that future generations would not be content with them if they continued to engage in such acts that drew the development of the areas backwards.
On the Health Walk, the Paramount Chief indicated that Health Walk was started four years ago, aimed at ensuring that the people were physically fit to support development initiatives.
He said the Sustainable Medical Missions (SMM), an international medical training and empowering organisation based in the United States had been supporting the annual exercise and admonished Ghanaians to always exercise to keep fit.
Naba Akwara said apart from the annual health walk, the NGO partnered with the traditional council to end open defecation through sensitization and the construction of toilet facilities.
Mr Thomas Lerewanu, the representative of the NGO explained that the mission of SMM over the years had been to train and support indigenous healthcare and faith-based leaders in underdeveloped communities to treat Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs) and other endemic conditions affecting the poorest community members.
He mentioned various tropical diseases including Trachoma, Onchocerciasis, Leprosy, Trypanosomiasis, Dracunculiasis, Buruli Ulcer, Hookworm, Schistosomiasis, Lymphatic Filariasis, Ascariasis, Trichuriasis and Leishmaniasis; as some of the Tropic Diseases SMM targets through its initiatives.
He said his outfit often started with the reading of the Gospel through showing documentaries before sensitising the community members on how to curb Intestinal, standards form of handwashing and de-worming.
He stressed that God was emphatic about the healthcare of the people as stated in many portions of the Bible and therefore called on the community members to take loving care of their personal hygiene.
The occasion which attracted other stakeholders including Non-Government Organisations, teachers and students from the Sirigu Senior High School, NGOs, Assembly Members, and opinion leaders, was also used for a clean-up exercise and football matches.
Source: GNA