Danger looms in Agona Akwakwaa; residents drink from polluted river

Today can report that there is a looming danger in Agona Akwakwaa in the Agona East District of the Central Region, if the authorities do not intervene, as residents of the area drink from the contaminated Ayensu river.

Our investigations showed that for the past five years, the residents had been fetching water from river Ayensu due to the lack of potable water in the area.

The situation, according to the chief and elders of Agona Akwakwaa, was as a result of the failure of successive governments to provide the community with sources of good drinking water.

The worrying situation, they explained, has heightened anxiety in the various communities within the district.

When Today visited the community on Thursday, May 25, 2017 to assess the situation, it observed that river Ayensu, which is the only source of drinking water for a population of over 5,400, was highly contaminated through activities of galamseyers (illegal miners).

Chief of the area, Nana Afriyie Akwah IV, in an interview with Today bemoaned the water situation in the town. He lamented that town. he development has brought untold hardship on residents in the t Flanked by the assemblyman for the area, elders, opinion leaders, unit committee members and the youth, Nii Afriyie Akwah IV asserted that the lives of his people and the adjoining communities were under serious threat as a result of the rate at which diarrhoea was affecting the residents.

“Water, they say, is life. But our lives are seriously in danger because majority of the people living in this community have been attending hospitals for treatment of water-borne diseases everyday because of the polluted nature our source of drinking water,” he disclosed.

He explained that “we used to have five boreholes in this area but they have all broken down, so we have no choice than to drink from river Ayensu which has been polluted through the activities of gold miners up stream.”

Nana Afriyie Akwah revealed that numerous appeals by his people to get the District Chief Executive of Agona East and Member of Parliament (MP) for the area to impress upon government to provide them with potable water has proved futile.

To this end, the visibly worried Nana Afriyie Akwa IV and his elders called on government to provide the community with potable water to help stop the spread of diarrhoea and its related water-borne diseases in the area.