Vice President, Dr Mahamudu Bawumia, on Saturday joined Naa Abe-ifaa Karbo III, Paramount Chief of the Lawra Traditional Area, to climax the commemoration of their 43rd Kobine Festival which celebrates the efforts of farmers.
Dr Bawumia recounted multiple successes of social and agricultural interventions introduced by government to improve living conditions of the populace.
He said President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has been working around the clock to address challenges that confront Lawra and the entire nation.
The government has, in the past three years, made huge investments to modernize agriculture, improve production sufficiency and achieve food security as well as make farming more profitable to local farmers.
A total of 5,744 farmers comprising 4,868 males and 876 females from the Lawra Municipal are benefiting from the ‘Planting for Food and Jobs’ programme introduced in 2017.
Dr Bawumia said: “Government, through the Lawra Municipality, has purchased and distributed about 120,000 cashew seedlings to farmers across the municipality under the Planting for Export and Rural Development’’ programme.
Under the ‘Infrastructure for Poverty Alleviation Programme’, he said, government was constructing seven water closet toilets with mechanized boreholes in selected communities in the area.
Eight mechanized boreholes are under construction,” he added: A fence wall was being constructed at the Lawra Municipal Hospital to address a flooding situation; a clinic was also under construction at Birifoh Baapari and the renovation of slaughterhouses in the municipality are also ongoing.
Dr Bawumia said 80 per cent of road contractors owed by government would be fully paid between October and November this year whiles the remaining 20 per cent would be settled at a later date.
He urged the Paramount Chief and the other chiefs and people of Lawra to continue to “support and cooperate” as government rolls out new policies to better their lives.
Every year around October, the Kobine (pronounced “Kó-bin-ah”) festival is celebrated in Lawra in the Upper West Region.
It serves as both a harvest celebration and as a homecoming event for indigenes of the area.