Bad roads isolate two communities from rest of district

Offinso (Ashanti), 3rd May 3, ?99 - Farmers in Naama and Kwakutaakrom and surrounding villages in the Offinso District have virtually been cut off from the rest of the district due to the poor state of the only feeder road that links the area.

The five-kilometre road has so deteriorated that vehicles, including tractors, have stopped plying it.

Mr A. P. K. Addo, Naama Assembly member who led newsmen to inspect the road, said large quantities of foodstuffs and cash crops are getting rotten in the farms, as a result of the poor state of the road.

Mr Addo said although the area produces more than sixty percent of the district's food and cash crops requirements, it is the least developed in terms of the provision of basic infrastructure.

He said the Offinso District Assembly could not deliver on its 1995 pledge to release two million cedis to supplement the farmers' efforts to re-habilitate the road.

Mr Addo added that in 1996, Mr Daniel Ohene Agyekum, then Ashanti Regional Minister, visited the area and promised to re-habilitate the road, but this has also not been fulfilled.

He said he had on several occasions appealed to the Offinso District Assembly, Feeder Roads department and the Ashanti Regional Co-ordinating Council on the situation but has not received any positive response.

Mr Addo stressed that if nothing was done about the road rehabilitation before the rains set in, the farmers would have no alternative but to abandon the area and demonstrate againstthe insensivity of the assembly and the Government over their plight.