Mr Zakaria Alhassan Gundaa, Northern Regional Chairman of the People’s National Convention (PNC) has offered free ploughing services to some 550 farmers in eight districts of the region through his personal resources. In addition to the free ploughing, Mr Gundaa has also provided a variety of seeds to the farmers for cultivation. In return for his services, he would receive a bag of maize from each beneficiary farmer at the end of the farming season and use these to help other farmers in the next farming season. Mr Gundaa, a farmer and a businessman, at the weekend told the Ghana News Agency in an interview at Datoyili, a farming community near Tamale that the initiative was to help fight poverty in the region. The beneficiary districts are Gushiegu, 50 farmers, Tamale Metro (Datoyili), 40 farmers, East Gonja 70 farmers, Savelugu/Nanton 30 farmers, Yendi Municipality 80 farmers and Tolon/Kumbungu 100 farmers. The rest are Central Gonja 50 farmers and Chereponi 70 farmers. Mr Gundaa indicated that though Ghanaians rejected the PNC manifesto and opted for the NDC, members of his party would continue to offer the necessary support to the people as they would one day consider voting the party into power. He explained that his assistance was not discriminatory adding; “One does not have to belong to the PNC before his farm is ploughed, all that it takes is to apply to benefit from the assistance”. Mr Gundaa urged farmers who needed assistance to liaise with the PNC chairmen in the various constituencies saying “Don’t hesitate to report any chairman who refuses you because you do not belong to the PNC.” He appealed to the government to institute pragmatic measures to address the poverty in the three northern regions to help bridge the north-south development gap. Source: GNA