The inauguration of the $70-million second phase of the redeveloped Tamale International Airport (TIA) yesterday should delight all Ghanaians.
This is a project begun in September 2014 by the Mahama-led National Democratic Congress administration and for the Akufo-Addo-led New Patriotic Party government to continue, finish and inaugurate it tells its own story.
Most often we hear accusations against one administration or another for abandoning projects, particularly massive ones, initiated by their predecessors.
Whatever the intentions behind such accusations, which are usually full of vituperation, are better known to the party communicators who speak about the projects.
For the public, the most important thing is to have information about the state or status of such projects at any time because they are initiated to advance the development of the country.
On that score, we wish to commend the Akufo-Addo administration for not abandoning the Tamale airport project.
We hope the government would take stock of all projects initiated by previous administrations and start processes to ensure their completion, if they remain relevant in today’s scheme of things.
While we do not want to express opinions on all the remarks made at the inauguration of the second phase of the redeveloped TIA, we wish to call attention to two of them.
The first is the call from Vice President Dr Mahamudu Bawumia to the country’s external development partners and stakeholders within to explore ways of developing storage facilities, including warehouses, to keep agricultural produce wholesome in a certain time frame due to the opportunity the airport has created for the promotion of the export of such produce to various parts of the world.
We support this suggestion and wish to appeal that facilities for storage of farm produce must not be provided in only Tamale but across the country.
It is sad to hear that the year farmers in this country get bumper harvest is when they rather regret their hard work because they lose much of their harvests to the absence of storage facilities where they are.
What is sadder is that some of these unfortunate farmers incur some financial losses and sometimes become unable to pay loans they took to support their farming activities.
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As an agrarian country, Ghana needs silos and other storage facilities to stem losses of agricultural produce, which discourage the attempt by farmers to produce more.
That situation also discourages the youth especially from taking to farming.
The other remark made at the inauguration which we want to comment on is Dr
Bawumia’s appeal to the chiefs and opinion leaders in the region to strengthen ties with the Ghana Airports Company Limited to protect the Tamale airport land from being encroached upon.
It is sad to see in this country that people always want to live close to public facilities and so they would do everything possible to encroach on public lands meant for facilities for the benefit of the whole country rather than individuals’ houses.
Sometimes, it is not even safe for people to live at such places, yet the relevant state agencies and officials who should check this jaundiced behaviour pretend to not see it because they are its front-liners.
We hope the TIA case would not follow the status quo but would be a reference point to check encroachment on state lands henceforth.
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