WIDEN HORIZON FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE — PREZ (SPREAD LEAD, AUGUST 16, 2010)

THE President, Prof. John Evans Atta Mills, has tasked security committees to focus on human security and seek ways and means of widening the horizon for social justice.
He said they should not only focus on chieftaincy disputes, tribal conflicts and armed robberies.
The various security committees must also seek ways to ensure the provision of social amenities and economic opportunities and reawaken a sense of communal togetherness which would ensure peaceful co-existence and cut down on the crime wave in the country.
President Mills threw the challenge to members of the various security committees from the Brong Ahafo and Ashanti regions attending a two-day orientation workshop organised by the National Security Council (NASEC) Secretariat in Sunyani last Friday.
The President, in an address read on his behalf by the Brong Ahafo Regional Minister, Mr Kwadwo Nyamekye-Marfo, to open the workshop, stated that without opportunities for economic development and social advancement in the rural areas, national security would continue to be under siege and, therefore, urged the security committees to make the planning and implementation of development programmes at the grass-root level their primary concern.
“It is my expectation that at the end of this orientation, participants will come to recognise that the essence of security committees at the national, regional and district levels is to offer leadership that gets things done to achieve the better Ghana agenda and make Ghana the beacon of Africa,” he stated.
The workshop, which was on the theme, “Understanding and appreciating the interface between security and development at the metropolitan, municipal and district levels”, was attended by the National Security Co-ordinator, Lt. Col. Larry Gbevlo Lartey; his deputy in charge of Operations, Mr E. G. Kosivi-Degbor; Messrs E.T. Mensah and Samuel Ofosu Ampofo, the Minister of Employment and Social Welfare and the Eastern Regional Minister, respectively.
President Mills noted that the era when the term ‘national security’ invoked fear in the minds of the ordinary Ghanaian must give way to a better understanding in which national security thrived on the Constitution working to the satisfaction of all.
He commended the NASEC Secretariat for organising the workshop to present the Better Ghana agenda from the National Security perspective, saying the novelty might be of surprise to some people.
Turning to the various metropolitan, municipal and district assemblies (MMDAs), President Mills urged them not to limit their development efforts to the building of markets and places of convenience but also the production of goods and services at the local level by owning productive enterprises, providing social amenities and reviving the communal sprit which, in the past and by Ghanaian tradition, had been responsible for development in the rural areas.
Participants at the workshop were taken through topics including, “The role and focus of DISEC/MUSEC/METROSEC in the Better Ghana agenda”, “Leadership at the district level”, “The effective use of by-laws for the Better Ghana agenda at the district level”, “The roles of the DCE/MCE and the district assembly in the youth-in-agriculture programme” and “Resource mobilisation at the district/municipal and metropolitan level”.