Volta Region Needs Funding

Volta Region�s Municipal and District Assemblies have been advised to seek expert help to craft master plans with budget lines backed by timely implementation to develop their tourism potentials. The region would be positioning itself as the next stop for developing its diverse and unique tourism attractions. Experts in tourism gave the advice at a dialogue session on how to enhance the region�s tourism potentials for enhanced socio-economic development on Thursday. It formed part of the four-day Volta Regional Policy Fair in Ho under the theme, �Empowering the people as we better Ghana�, featuring an exhibition of policies and projects and activities of Ministries, Departments and Agencies as well as Municipal and District Assemblies in the region. Mr Frank Kofigah, Deputy Executive Director of Operations, Ghana Tourist Authority, prescribed 12 specific projects which should form the core of such master plans. These are eco-tourism, strategically highway rest stops and motels, avenue planting, district museums, children�s parks and sports fields and tour operations. The others are craft villages, beautification of villages and towns, enhancing tourist attractions with the help of the GTA, forestation and re-forestation and hiking trails. Mr Kofigah advised the Assemblies to engage the services of travel writers and send delegations abroad to market the region�s attractions and promote domestic tourism through tourist clubs in schools, colleges and villages and workplaces. `He observed that the region�s tourism sector was suffering from lack of marketing, undeveloped potentials, reluctance of the indigenes to invest in the sector, late arrival and non-existence of major infrastructure such as roads, electricity, water, among others. Mr Kofigah said the �region is off the beaten track of international tourist flows to Ghana. He said these challenges not-withstanding, the Volta region offered a one-stop destination for the tourist to see Ghana in its entirety at a reduced cost. Mr Kofigah urged indigenes of the region to invite people from other parts of the country to visit the region as a way of promoting its attractions.