Ave Traditional demands separate constituency

Ave-Dakpa, Jan. 18, GNA - The Chiefs and People of the Ave Traditional Area, in the Akatsi District on Saturday demanded a separate constituency carved out of the Avenor Constituency to cater for their needs. They said the new constituency, to be named, "Ave Constituency" would end continuing designs by Mr Nicholas Negble, Akatsi District Chief Executive (DCE) to make the traditional area lag behind the Avenor area in all sectors of development.

Mr. Mac-Solo Dziwornu Ziddah, President of the Ave-Dakpa Development Union (ADU), made the demand on behalf of the Chiefs at a press conference at Ave-Dakpa. He maintained that the Ave area had met all the prerequisites to qualify for a separate constituency and should be urgently considered. Mr Ziddah also repeated the Ave area's earlier demand that Akatsi District be renamed Ave-Avenor District to reflect the identities of the main traditional areas constituting it. He regretted that the unwritten agreement between the Avenor and Ave traditional areas when the Akatsi District was created in 1988 was that the areas should share the two political offices, each side taking either the Member of Parliament (MP) position or that of the DCE but this was abandoned in 2001.

Mr Ziddah said as it is now, the DCE and the MP hail from the Avenor area. He commended the MP, for performing well but insisted that the Ave Constituency be created for the area to regain its identity. Mr Ziddah said, of the two Senior Secondary Schools (SSS) in the District-Akatsi Secondary Technical and Ave Secondary School, Ave Secondary School was the most deprived but Mr Negble unilaterally picked Akatsi Secondary Technical School to benefit from the programme of up- grading of one SSS in each district.

He also alleged that Mr Negble had never visited the Ave-Secondary school and had failed to lend support to the construction of a four-unit laboratory block, a major need of the school. Mr Ziddah accused Mr Negble of changing the ratio of the distribution of European Union (EU) Micro-Projects from five to four in favour of the Avenor area to seven to two in favour of Avenor. He also alleged that 14 out of 20 boreholes being constructed under the Village Infrastructure Project (VIP) went to the Avenor area, while out of 13 projects under the HIPC Fund only four was approved for the Ave area and none of the 1.7 billion projects of the GETFUND had come to the area.

Mr Ziddah demanded that the 200 million cedis set aside by the Akatsi District Assembly for Electrification Projects be shared equally between the two traditional areas. He alleged that the District Assembly attempted to divert materials including two transformers meant for the electrifications projects in the Ave area to the Ketu District.

Togbe Fianu Egbodzekpor III, of Ave-Afiadenyigba cautioned that the District Assembly played its cards well to avoid creating tension in the district. He said the Ave area, meanwhile was considering the next line of action to take to address its concerns. When contacted on telephone by the Ghana News Agency (GNA), Mr Negble said he had never, in action or words exhibited anything to show bias in the distribution of projects in the district. He said all projects were located according to need and said records of completed and projects going on were available for perusal.