No water for Sissala farming communities

Jijen (UW/R) April 25, GNA - The Chiefs and people in Jijen, a farming community in the Sissala East District of the Upper West Region on Tuesday appealed to the government to consider drilling more bore-holes for them to overcome the perennial water shortage in the area.

They further appealed for the construction of dams to embark on dry season farming and also to get permanent drinking place for their animals.

Speaking in an interview with the Ghana News Agency (GNA) in the community, Mr Baduon Fusheini, Jijen town committee secretary said, apart from the frequent break down of the only two boreholes serving about 3,000 people, during the dry season they also find it difficult to get enough water.

Jijen is a predominantly farming community, about 60 kilometres to the south of Tumu, the Sissala East District capital with a population of about 3000 people.

Apart from engaging in food crops farming, such as maize, millet, sorghum, yam and cowpea, the people also cultivate a lot of cotton and rear cattle, goats, sheep and poultry.

Mr Baduon said although the district assembly was making frantic efforts to make them comfortable, there was the need for other philanthropists to assist them to come out of their problems. "We shall forget of poverty, if we have the dams to do enough farming and to allow our animals to get frequent supply of drinkable water in this area."

The town committee secretary also complained of poor roads in the area, as they sometimes found it difficult to cart their foodstuff from the farms to marketing centres in the area. "We only hope that the water and roads problems in the region would be solved to open us up to other areas" he concluded.