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The Okyehene, Osagyefo Amoatia Ofori Panin II has urged African leaders to prioritise and use the resources the continent has been endowed with to improve the lives of its people rather than resorting to the accumulation of wealth for their selfish interest.

Speaking at the Ghana Institute of Safety and Environmental professionals (GhISEP) 2016 Summit in Accra, he said that for any country to achieve its desired goals it is incumbent on the leadership to desist from using public funds to enrich themselves in order to help provide for its people, "leaders should prioritise the needs of the country and provide some basic necessities for its people if the country want sustainable development."

"Tell African leaders the joy of a leader is not in material possession but the ability to provide and ask yourself what you have done for your people. We cannot be called the cradle of human civilization and yet 35% of people don’t have toilet facilities, we cannot be the richest continent in the world and yet the continent with Ebola. We cannot remain here. We cannot be silent to the cry of poor folks. This was not set up by our forbears just to benefit a privileged few. Ghana does not have a dialysis machine for people with kidney problems yet we order over a hundred land cruisers into the country. Leadership in Africa continues to break the principle of priorities,’’ he noted.

The Ghana Institute of safety and Environmental professionals (GhISEP) is a professional body for safety, occupational health and environmental professionals and practitioners in Ghana.

The Okyehene noted that in the current social and economic environment, only leaders who were creative would be able to move beyond the conventional methods of doing things and adopt methods that would move with the times and address the challenges the country is confronted with.

He said "We are building single lanes whiles else where people are constructing superhighways connecting cities. We cannot do this as a country from Accra to Kumasi. We cannot keep doing things the same way we use to do when we had a population of four million whiles the population has now ballooned to twenty five million."

He attributed the fallen standards of education in the country to the failure of various governments to make education a major priority especially the welfare of teachers.

He stated "Teachers should be provided with the necessary logistics, we should give priority to the needs of teachers, buildings don’t teach, learning materials don’t teach, teachers do. Every child deserves a desk, a roof over their heads it is knowledge and ideas that would transform the economy."

He noted that one of the key components of democracy is accountability and freedom of speech and therefore asked people to demand accountability from their leaders and indicated that "tax money is for you to manage my affairs and bring me comfort and convenience. All you can do for me is to be able to live in comfort and safety. They are the employers and we are the employees giving them everything for free, electricity, water, etc. and yet they are not concerned about us. We need to challenge these people we have hired. Speak when you see corruption, speak when you see an injustices speak when you are confronted with wrong doing," he stressed.

Mr. Bright Bansah, an executive of the Institute said that the purpose of the summit was to promote the advancement of the occupational health, safety and environmental profession and to also provide support and encouragement  for those responsible for managing and promoting workplace safety in Ghana.

"We are to encourage greater professional and social cooperation and interaction among members of safety and allied fields and disciplines like quality and security. GhISEP believes in the philosophy of safe work in a sustainable environment and seeks to champion this through professional excellence," he emphasised.

He noted that more programmes on workplace safety and environmental protection would be rolled out to sensitise workers in future.

The summit brought together over fifty professionals in the oil and mining firms, the academia and some regulatory bodies.