Municipal and District Chief Executives (MDCEs) have been tasked to enact and enforce the Assemblies by-laws by prioritising security and guarantee the welfare of their residents.

Section 181 of the Local Government Act 936, 2016 empowered them to enact and enforce by-laws.

Kwasi Adu-Gyan, the Bono East Regional Minister, gave the directive when he addressed heads of departments and agencies and MDCEs at a Regional Coordinating Council (RCC) meeting at Techiman.

He noted that ensuring security and guaranteeing the welfare of residents’ required strict enforcement of by-laws to maintain peace, security and harmony of communities and challenged them to concentrate on commercial agriculture, industrialisation, human capital development, infrastructure and tourism.

Mr Adu-Gyan expressed concern about poor sanitation, which could lead to the outbreak of communicable diseases, saying “the assemblies requires sanitation by-laws to address indiscipline and to improve on the sanitation situation in the region.

“The region has about 23,564 square kilometres of rich arable land and more than 70 per cent of the people are farmers and it is imperative to modernise agriculture through mechanisation and technology systems by establishing commercial block farming to make farming attractive for the youth.

“It is my vision to make Bono East the rice hub of the country since we have the potential to do so and we must make the rice sector attractive for smallholder farmers and encourage the National Service Scheme, Nation Builders Corps and the Youth Employment Agency to invest in the sector and has more than 308 rice valleys, covering 32,000 hectares of land that can create direct and indirect employment for about 3,000 youth,” Mr Adu-Gyan assured.

The Regional Minister said the RCC intended to undertake a rice project that would create 9,030 farms and engage 500 skilled and semi-skilled workers at mechanisation centres and create jobs for more than 100,000 people which would also produce about 125,000 tonnes of rice and help reduce importation by 10 per cent.