Cocoa farmers at Enchi in the Aowin Municipality of the Western Region have appealed to the government to as a matter of urgency fix the deplorable roads linking the various cocoa growing communities in the municipality.
The farmers claimed that the dilapidated nature of road networks plus the onset of the rains had adversely affected the conveyance of cocoa beans from farms and producing communities to the various market centres in the country.
They have therefore threatened to send their cocoa to Ivory Coast to sell on condition that government fails to attend to their deplorable roads.
The residents asserted that they had been facing the challenge for more than 20 years, but nothing had been done about it amidst several complaints.
They disclosed that many cocoa farmers in the district become highly stranded anytime there was heavy downpour since the roads linking their farms become completely impassable.
The farmers appealed to the government to treat their plea as an emergency situation and come to their aid as their cocoa beans were getting rotten on their farms.
“Our fear is that thousands of our bags of cocoa beans will not be transported to Accra for trading because of the deplorable state of the road here”, they asserted.
DCE Reacts
Speaking to DAILY GUIDE in an interview, the Municipal Chief Executive (MCE) for Aowin, Samuel Adu-Gyamfi, mentioned that the agitation by the farmers had not come to his notice.
He noted that if really the farmers were threatening to send their produce to Ivory Coast, then they were doing that out of anger.
He explained that the deplorable 71-kilometre Elubo-Enchi road, which began in 2011, would soon be put into good shape.
He indicated that the road was part of the infrastructural projects that would be financed by the Sinohydro financing facility.
“In fact, we are making frantic efforts to put the road in good shape. I am happy to state that when the President visited Aowin some months ago, he stated that the road project which had been captured in the 2018 budget would be fixed”, he added.
He therefore appealed to the farmers to be patient as efforts are afoot to fix the deplorable road by the current government.
He pointed out that the pictures of the poor road on the social media had been sent to the Regional Director of Ghana Highway Authority and the Regional Minister since the construction of the road was beyond the capacity of the municipal assembly.
The MCE gave an assurance that the assembly would in the mean time arrange for some boulders to help fix some spots on the road that are damaged.
President Surprised
It would be recalled that President Akufo-Addo was surprised when some chiefs in the region appealed to him to help fix their deplorable roads in the region when he visited the area some months ago.
According to the President, despite the mantra of “unprecedented infrastructural development” touted by the Mahama government, the major complaint of the chiefs and people in the region was the poor nature of their road infrastructure.
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Daily Guide
