Assin Manso Slave Market to be improved to attract tourists

The Ministry of Tourism and Modernisation of the Capital City is to improve facilities at the Assin Manso Slave Market, Slave Cemetery and Slave River (Donko Nsuo) to attract more tourists to the area.

Under the programme a museum, information centre and a chapel would be built while a site would be cleared for dignitaries visiting the place to plant trees.

The Sector Minister, Mr Jake Obetsebi-Lamptey, said this on Tuesday when he visited the Market, Cemetery and the Slave River. The slaves had their bath in the Slave River before they were sent to the market for re-sale to buyers from the new world.

During PANAFEST and Emancipation Day celebrations Africans in the Diaspora visit the area.

The Minister, who was on a two-day tour of tourist sites in the Central Region, also visited the Assin Praso European Cemetery and slave mass grave at the outskirts of the town and Kakum National Park.

He also visited the Wassa Domama Rock Shrine in the Daboase District of the Western Region where three huge rocks each measuring about 30 metres long and 25 metres high with a fourth one measuring about 32 metres long covering the top to create space underneath that can accommodate about 50 people.

A spokesman for the committee on the shrine told newsmen that between January and May this year 123 tourists both foreign and local had visited the site.

He said the bad nature of the road from the town to the site discouraged people from making a second visit and, therefore, appealed to the government to improve the road.