Remove illegal settlements to save Bui Dam – Traditional Council

The Banda Traditional Council has called for the government to act quickly to dismantle illegal settlements built closer to the Bui Hydro Dam to save it from collapse.

The chiefs said illegal mining activities of people in those settlements, who are mainly from Bole, in the Savanna Region, had become a huge threat not only to the dam but the peace.

Kwansiafamu Oseadeeyo Barima Kofi Anim Anyan Hantali, the Abremponhene of Banda Traditional Area, said there could be communal clashes, if they were not forced out of the place.

He was addressing a press conference held by the Council at Banda-Ahenkro and attended by chiefs, opinion leaders and the youth from across the area.

The group reportedly started settling in abandoned communities like Dokokyina, Bui Village and Akanyakrom, where the indigenous people (original settlers) had been removed and re-settled in Banda-Ahenkro for their own safety and that of the dam, about two months ago.

Kwansiafamu Hantali warned that they were not going to allow land grab by anybody.

He claimed their food crop and cashew farms were being plundered by those occupiers.

The Black Volta, he said, was the boundary between Bono and ‘Gonjaland’ and that it was mind boggling why any Gonja should attempt to re-draw the boundary.

They found it provocative that those “trespassers” had even installed a chief to superintend the illegality.

He said things could not continue the way they were going and that, the patience of the people in the traditional area was running thin.

He said they had been struggling to understand why anybody should be permitted to settle at the Bui Dam Site, if the original owners of the land had been forced out.