Assembly Member Spanks VRA... over alleged raw deal

THE YOUTH and elders of West Kpong, Volta River Authority (VRA) Resettlement Area, in the Manya Krobo District are fuming with anger at what they describe as unfair treatment meted out to them by the VRA, after they had vacated their ancestral lands for the construction of the Kpong Hydroelectric Project.

They have, therefore, called on the NPP government to come to their aid.

The call was made by the assembly member for the area, Hon. Ebenezer S. K. Agorvor, on behalf of the people in a one hour chat with the Chronicle at Kpong, last weekend.

Agorvor revealed that instead of building a township for his people, the VRA simply put up houses for them without any social infrastructure, such as market, clinic, lorry park, town hall and police station.

He maintained that for the past 20 years, the people of West Kpong have been left at the mercy of robbers, fate and disease, and asked rhetorically

"Could you believe that I have to organise communal labour on weekly basis for all able-bodied men and women to remove toilets using buckets and shovels without even hand gloves or disinfectants? Is this our reward for sacrificing for a national cause like the Kpong dam."

The assembly man revealed that within 10 years of resettlement, nearly half of the houses have developed deep cracks in the walls, and that even though they had a market in the old town, the VRA is today denying them one.

"The roads are in the most deplorable of states, drainage system is poor while water from the various bath houses freely flow into people's compounds," he charged.

He said what is more worrying to him is the fact that he was made to understand that the VRA had long handed over the administration of the township to the Manya Krobo District Assembly (MKDA) and wonders how the district would accept such a responsibility without first taking inventory of the aforementioned facilities, adding that such raw deal can easily discourage others from willingly sacrificing for any future national cause.

At the time of filing this report, the VRA Resettlement Officer, Mr. Agadzi, was not readily available for comment.

However, the District Chief Executive (DCE) of Manya Krobo, Mr. Andrews Kwesi Teye, for his part, appeared disturbed that VRA had not furnished the district with the site plans of the affected communities for him to know which amenities the people deserved legally.

Notwithstanding, Teye said he was aware of such injustices VRA metes out to villagers, citing his own village, Anyomoni, where the people were compensated for the trees only and not for the land that was taken over by the VRA after the construction of the dam.

He said as far as he was concerned, there had been no official handing over by VRA to the district, which stands to reason that the affected resettlement areas deserve whatever facilities that are indicated on the site plans.

He hinted that he was billed for an important meeting with VRA early April and expressed the hope that the concerns raised would be very high on the agenda.