Smoke from burning tyres are billowing into the skies as chants of war songs by angry residents clad in red takes over the Tarkwa Township in the Tarkwa Nsuaem Municipality of the Western region.
Traffic has come to a standstill as demonstrators have blocked all the major roads in the town with burning tyres and other impeding objects with a warning that they are prepared to uproot president Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo like cassava if he fails to work on the road in the area.
The latest action follows the failure by government to heed to a two-week ultimatum by the Concerned Citizens of Tarkwa to fix their roads, which have become practically unmotorable.
The residents say they have had to bear with airborne diseases due to the dust that emanate from the roads as heavy duty mining vehicles and other commercial ones ply them day and night.
Food vendors and hawkers also say they have been forced out of business, because their merchandises get soiled by dust and mud, making them unwholesome for consumption, thereby preventing patrons from buying them
Some of them who spoke on Kumasi-based Angel FM and monitored by MyNewsGh.com warned the Member of Parliament (MP) for the area, Hon Mireku Duker not to step foot in the town to campaign for his seat in 2020 without fixing the roads first.
They say the MP is only good at paying lip service to their complaints and choose to take credit for things which are of no material value to them.
“Duker came to tell us that we should retain him in 2020 because he has sent three Muslims to Mecca; what has that gotten to do with our most pressing need”, one woman said.
The demonstrators say nothing would stop them from quenching the fire because they have planned that it would burn for three days straight to send a strong signal to authorities.
In September 2018, the Minister of Lands and Natural Resources, Kwaku Asomah Cheremeh was blocked from entering the town, by residents who were embarking on a similar demonstration.
The roads in the Tarkwa Municipality are so dilapidated that, commuting between suburbs have become a daily headache for the residents though gold has been mined in the town for close to a century.
Subsequent governments have promised to fix the roads, but the opposite is what happens at the end of their tenure.
The residents of Tarkwa have vowed to vote against this current administration of the new patriotic party if it fails to fix their roads immediately.
President Akufo Addo is expected to launch a $2 billion infrastructure investment in the northern regional capital of tamale today.
According to NPP General Secretary, John Boadu, the two-million-dollar investment will include the construction of a number of roads and highways in the Northern and Western regions.
“…two-thirds of which [$2bn infrastructure investment will be in roads and highways, this will be the single largest infrastructure investment project by any government by any government in a year over the past five decades”, he said at a press conference on Sunday.
It is however unclear whether the Tarkwa roads would be captured in the yet to be launched initiative.
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