Too early to impose curfew on Ahwiaa – MP

Member of Parliament for Kwabre East, Francisca Oteng-Mensah, has ruled out the imposition of a curfew on Ahwiaa in the Kwabre East district of the Ashanti Region following Saturday’s bloody clashes between some Zongo youths and residents of the town.

According to her, calm has returned to the area and people are going about their normal business, and, therefore, imposing a curfew on the town will be unnecessary.

Ms Oteng-Mensah said this in an interaction with Adehye FM's Elisha Adarkwah when she joined the District Chief Executive of the area to visit the town on Sunday, 4 February 2018.

She said: “You should be able to come out with several reasons why there should be curfew. This whole conflict started [Saturday] and looking at what I’m seeing now, I’ll say most people have been able to settle down and people have started doing their businesses, quite a number of shops are operating and I think it is good enough…

“But in a situation whereby there is still a fight here and maybe in the night there are gunshots, then you should know something should be done to tackle it but we’ve not gotten there yet for us to speak to authorities to impose a curfew, but once it gets to a point for us to speak to authorities to impose a curfew, we will push for that.”

Dozens were injured on Saturday, 3 February 2018, after some Zongo youth and residents of Ahwiaa got involved in bloody clashes.

The fight occurred in the early hours with the factions attacking each other with machetes, broken bottles and other weapons after the townsfolk had prevented the Zongo youth from participating in a burial and funeral rites of a deceased lady.