The Northern Patriots in Research and Advocacy (NORPRA), a Civil Society Organization, has appealed to government to commit adequate resources for the implementation of the Savannah Accelerated Development Authority (SADA). Whilst commending government for initiating the implementation process by passing the SADA bill and inaugurating its board, the group called on the government to provide adequate funding and to fast-track it’s smooth implementation. This was contained in a petition signed at the weekend by Mr Bismak Ayorogo Adongo, President of NORPRA, for the attention of President John Atta Mills. “Whilst we commend government for initiating the implementation of SADA, we are totally dissatisfied with government’s unwillingness to allocate substantial amount of state resources to this pro-poor SADA. Our dissatisfaction stems from the fact that the Ghanaian economy is now resilient, sound, vibrant, strong and better than before due to your prudent economic management,” the petition stated. It said the National Democratic Congress (NDC) entered into a social contract with the people of the three northern regions and Ghana for that matter, through its manifesto in 2008 that it would immediately take urgent steps to set up SADA with initial start-up capital of “200 million Ghana cedis”. It also noted that the party, in its manifesto, promised to make an annual contribution of GH¢100 million to SADA for a 20-year period and also to lead a donor conference on Northern Ghana with the aim of raising an additional $200 million from Ghana‘s Development Partners and the Private Sector in order to ensure that SADA got a firm and solid financial foundation. The petition stated that government had failed to honour its promise of providing GH¢200 million as seed capital and the GH¢100 million annually and questioned why the government has not also held the donor conference as promised in its manifesto. According to the petition, the government only provided GH¢25 million in 2010 and another GH¢25 Million in 2011 as its seed capital instead of the GH¢200 million seed capital. The petition, therefore, appealed to President Mills to urgently allocate the GH¢200 million to SADA with retrospective effect from 2009 and to also speed up the rest of the contributions as promised the people towards the implementation of SADA, especially those which had not yet been tackled at all. Mr Mark Woyongo, Upper East Regional Minister, indicated that government was committed to the implementation of SADA and explained that the passage of the bill and the inauguration of the SADA Board was a clear indication of the commitment. He indicated that plans were far advanced to organize the Donor Conference to secure more funding for SADA, adding that there were many pro-poor interventional policies and programmes including the Rural Electrification Project and provision of potable water all aimed at reducing poverty and bridging the gap between the north and the south. Source: GNA