Government decides where district capital can be sited – Queen Mother

Nana Ama Ayensua Saara III, Queen Mother of Denkyira, has said no individual or a chief could determine where a district capital should be located because it was the prerogative of the Government to decide on a suitable town based on the advice from its technocrats.

She said the location of administrative capitals should be devoid of ethnic or tribal considerations and not to be influenced by affiliations, but fairness, sound judgment, reasonableness and pragmatism.

Nana Ama Saara said this at a news conference organized by the chiefs and people of Lower Denkyira at Jukwa to register their displeasure on a statement allegedly made by the Hemanghene, Otumfuo Amoa Sasraku III when Vice-President John Mahatma visited the area recently to inaugurate a Small Towns and Water Sanitation Project at Twifo Hemang.

Nana Sasraku III was reported to have proposed the elevation of Hemang-Lower Denkyira area into a district with Hemang as its capital because Denkyira as an ethnic entity has two capitals in the Upper and Lower Denkyira Districts.

The Queen Mother asserted that Nana Sasraku’s remarks had the tendency of creating tension between the two traditional areas, Denkyira and Twifo-Hemang and consequently impact negatively on the peace and development of the area.

She said such pronouncements could also draw the Government into unnecessary ethnic quagmire and that the selection of a district capital should be on merit and not on traditional or ethnic lines.

Nana Saara said Denkyira and Twifo-Hemang had had very peaceful, harmonious and brotherly relations and co-existed in the same administrative districts since time immemorial and this was not the time to disturb the relationship.

The Queen Mother said the Denkyira State was not for any particular political party but supported the Government of the day.

Source: GNA