Mr Isaac Adawele Atesige, Second Vice Chairman of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) in charge of Upper East Region, has announced his intention to contest the party's primaries for the Chiana-Paga Constituency. In that case the 36-year-old Second Vice Chairman, a Quantity Surveyor, has to relinquish his position to enable him to contest as the party's constitution demands. Speaking to the Ghana News Agency, Mr Atesige said he had all it took to contest the primaries and said he was confident that he would win the seat for the area after the primaries. He said the party would lose the seat if it did not get somebody who had the qualities of winning the seat after the primaries. Mr Atesige pointed out that as a young person, he had been assured by the elders and the youth including women in the area to stand for the primaries and that they would vote for him as a Parliamentary Candidate. He was a social person and very much liked by the people regardless of political affiliation and was more capable of attracting floating voters to the party during the 2012 election. "I have more influence over the people in the area since I grew up in the community and did things in common with them and also appreciate their problems and needs. "Again about 70 per cent of the electorate in the area is the youth and they pledged to vote for me both at the primaries and parliamentary election". He noted that when he emerged the winner at the primaries and subsequently become a Member of Parliament, his top priority would be to develop the Paga Crocodile Pound and slave market. He said he would do that through his share of the MP's share of the common fund and also lobby for additional sources of funding to develop the tourist sites. "When they are developed, they will help generate employment for the people, especially the teaming youth who migrate to the southern sector because of lack of jobs". He said another priority area would be to empower women's groups in the area by lobbying to get microfinance to undertake economic activities especially sheanut picking and processing which were very common in the constituency. He said he would empower the youth to go into irrigation farming and that one of the major problems facing the farmers on their irrigated farms was lack of water, stressing that this problem would be a thing of the past. Source: GNA