The Osu Welfare Association (OWA) has given its support to the Osu Mantse, Nii Okwei Kinka Dowuona VI, for the creation of Osu Klottey Municipal Assembly.
They said Osu Klottey Constituency has what it takes to have an autonomous municipality to liberate the citizens from their socio-economic bondage.
Mr Earl Nartey, the Acting Public Relations Officer of the Association, who made this known at a press conference at Osu, on Saturday, appealed to the government to expedite action in carving Osu Klottey out of the Accra Metropolitan Assembly.
He said the people of Osu have been marginalized, because development in the area did not commensurate the chunk of revenue contribution the area makes to the Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA).
“We wish to earnestly emphasize that everything that is required of a community to become a municipality are all available within Osu and its environs and the area has more than what it takes to be made a municipality.”
Mr Nartey said the creation of a municipality have countless advantages of employment opportunities that would reduce the youth engaging themselves in social vices.
He said giving Osu a municipality was not too much for a community that has sacrificed its lands for government and the people of Ghana to the detriment of her indigenes.
He said the call was expedient, appropriate and timely, since Osu, among other settlements, had been deprived of the benefits of her natural resources.
Mr Nartey said Nii Kinka Dowuona, the Paramount Chief and President of the Osu Traditional Council had “commenced healing the wounds of the protracted chieftaincy disputes that had engulfed the community and was bringing sanity and dignity to the people.”
He said since the coronation of the Osu Mantse, Nii Kinka Dowuona, he had through hard work with the members of the Traditional Council, from the four quarters of Osu, begun achieving developments for the area.
Mr Nartey mentioned the renovation and refurbishment of the Osu Mantse Palace, the provision of a 28-seater bus, a 12-seater bus and a pickup for the use of the palace, establishment of Osu Mantse Community Development Initiative (OMANCODI, among others.
Concerning the welfare of the people, he said, the Traditional Council, under the leadership of the Paramount Chief, had set up a Welfare Fund to assist brilliant but needy children of the community, and that, so far 96 students of both sexes in Senior High school and at the tertiary level were benefitting.
The community has also benefited from a regular health screening exercise of the elderly, nursing mothers and their babies, as well as the youth, while the cost of registration of new subscribers onto the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) for the aged and the deprived were being catered for yearly by the Traditional Council.
Mr Nartey said Nii Kinka Dowuona had revitalized the love for traditions and cultural values of Osu citizens, and that, for the past seven years the celebration of the Homowo festival was one to boast of.
“The Chief is undertaking the Royal Mausoleum Project, the final resting place of our departed chiefs, but the AMA is yet to respond,” Mr Nartey said.
