Charles Kofi Wayo, alias “Nimaboy”, a member of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), has established farm projects in three locations outside Accra, to provide jobs for the street youth.
The project is estimated at about ?2.5 billion over five years.
A total of 152 people are currently engaged on the “Wayo projects” at Koforidua, Suhum and Okurase, in the West Akim district of the Eastern region.
It aims at setting up model farms for the street youth to generate income for themselves with sponsorship from Mr. Wayo, who would not like to make a show of the projects, but Daily Guide heard of it and decided to investigate.
The Okurase Farm, near Nsawam has 25 people working on it, including five women as well.
Three of the five women claimed that they used to sell (hawk) apples on the streets of Accra, but have now come to lend helping hands to the Wayo Farm project.
The people have dug a well in the farm and are using the underground water to irrigate the crops.
Guide’s investigations found that they were taught how to do practical things, like providing their own means to water the farmland by Kofi Wayo.
The main crops on the land are okro, garden eggs black beauty-short and long eggs out cucumber, maize, cassava, and sweet pepper.
Two of the farm hands, Isaac Otoo, 18, and Kwadwo Boakye, 20, were picked up from the streets of Accra to the Wayo farms.
According to Master Otoo, he used to be a driver’s apprentice at the Neoplan station in Accra, but ever since he started work on the farm, he has realised that it’s wrong for the youth to migrate to the cities in search of jobs and to engage in menial jobs, whilst they could find something worth-while to do by way of farming to generate income for their livelihood.
On his part, Kwadwo Boakye, also told pressmen that he was in Accra selling mirrors when he was approached by Kofi Arkaah Mensah, a Rastafarian, and informed that Mr. Wayo had given them some money to establish farms and take away the youths from the streets of Accra, and that if he was interested, he could provide him instant job in the farm.
He, therefore, came to with Mr. Mensah to start the farms and to date, the result is the food and cash crop farm that they have at Okurase.
He expressed his profound gratitude to Mr. Wayo for not only funding the project, but also seeing to their upkeep in terms of food and other daily necessities.
Speaking at a meeting with the chief and people of Okurase at her palace, Mr. Wayo said it has always been his burning desire to help people, but because he’s not in government, it has become difficult because he doesn’t have unlimited funds.
He said it’s the duty of the government to provide jobs for the people and regretted that although he has a lot of ideas as to how to arrest the unemployment situation in the country, government has not been paying heed to him.
According to him, if he were the president, he would have initiated a number of projects that would have provided jobs for almost everybody in the country in order to save the ordinary man or woman in the street from penury or abject poverty.
According to him, the country is replete with a lot of human and material resources, which should make Ghana one of the privileged best countries in the world, but because the resources are being misapplied, and/ or that the wrong people are in positions, the country is perpetually getting poorer.
He said he finds it worrying when the country’s leaders embark on a series of trips outside Ghana, to go and look for foreign investors, whilst opportunities exist here for creating wealth and generating employment.
The odikro of the town, Nana Baffour Ampofo III, commended Mr. Wayo for this efforts.
She, however, expressed regret that her people could not provide enough farm lands and pledged to release more land for the project after a meeting with her elders and townsfolk on Tuesday, November 11,2002.
According to her, this is the first time someone had promised them something and had actually come back to fulfil it.
The first Kofi Wayo Fan Club was founded at Nima before the Koforidua, Suhum, Kawawa and Okoruse ones. There is another one at Kawawa in the Northern region which is getting ready to take off.
The Koforidua project is chaired by Nana Kweku Bonsu with Papa Kwame as secretary. The other farms in Suhum and Okurase are chaired by Nana Kwame and Kofi Arkaah Mensah, whilst the other one which he chooses to call the Northern Initiative is located at Kawawa.
He plans to tour the North this weekend.
