Bad roads, obstacle to poverty alleviation in Sissala area

Wa, Jan. 26, GNA - Mr Moses Luri, Executive Director of the Sissala Literacy and Development Programme (SILDEP), has stated that, the achievement of the Millennium Development Goal (MDG), would be a mirage in the Sissala East and West districts, unless massive investments were made to develop road infrastructure in the area.

He said the poor road network had made many of the rural communities in the Sissala area inaccessible, making the carting of farm produce to market centres difficult for farmers in those locked up communities.

Mr Luri was briefing the GNA on Tuesday, in Wa, on the outcome of an end-of-year meeting of his organization, held at the weekend, at Tumu, in the Sissala East District of the Upper West Region.

The SILDEP Director noted that, the situation bred poverty and hunger, as majority of the people were engaged in farming as a means of sustaining their livelihoods.

He said the situation also hindered the education of children in the area, as many of them failed to attend school any time it rains heavily.

Mr Luri called on government, chiefs, Assembly members and NGOs to invest in infrastructure, as well as micro enterprise skills development, to engage the youth in productive and environmentally sound activities, to save the forest from total depletion.

He called on individuals and contractors that had been entrusted with the execution of development projects in the area to do so whole heartedly without any corrupt tendencies.

He cited the Sissala East District Assembly block that had been recently ripped off by wind, the few kilometres of tarred road on the Tumu-Bolgatanga stretch and the newly constructed classroom block at Zini, that had already recorded alarming cracks, as some of the shoddy works that huge sums of monies were expended on, which had not benefited the people.

Mr Luri said until these teething development obstructions were completely removed from the system, the area would be drawing the country back from its aim of achieving the MDGs by the year 2015.