Celebrate Homowo with caution - KoKMA

The Korle Klottey Municipal Assembly (KoKMA) has urged the people of Osu and its environs to celebrate this year's Homowo festival with caution like other festivals across the country due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Assembly to this effect advised that the street jams and carnival that has become a significant feature of the Osu Homowo celebration be suspended this year.

It also called on owners of wayside drinking spots, places of entertainment, and local dish restaurants within the Osu Township and its immediate environs should endeavor to let their patrons observe the COVID-19 protocols."

In a press statement signed by Nii Ofori-Quaye, Public Relations Officer, KoKMA, and issued to the Ghana News Agency in Accra the assembly expressed satisfaction in the peaceful manner in which events leading to the celebration of this year’s annual Osu Homowo festival have occurred.

It also applauds the chiefs, elders, and entire citizenry of the Municipality for eschewing violence and other acts of disturbances that characterised some previous year’s performance of the ritual feast to herald the festival.

According to the statement, this year’s celebration of the Homowo festival would be exceptionally different from that of years passed due to the global outbreak of COVID-19 with its attendant effects on many families and the nation as a whole.

It said indeed, COVID-19 had ravaged the global economy and claimed thousands of lives globally and the world is still counting the losses up to date.

It said it was an incontrovertible tradition that Homowo festivities, for many years passed, draw into the Municipality a large number of people from all walks of life to join in the celebration mood and the emergence of COVID-19 inevitably would throw a huge challenge to the enforcement of the social distancing protocol during the peak of pump and pageantry associated with the festivities.

The release appealed to the chiefs and admonished all and sundry to co-operate with the Assembly's authorities by complying with the caution to celebrate in moderation.

"Korle Klottey Municipal Assembly wishes the Chiefs and people of the Municipality a very happy celebration."