Residents call for construction of 14-year-old abandoned Dawa Juanya-Sekesua road, bridge projects

Correspondence from Eastern region

Residents of Dawa Juanya, a farming community in the Eastern Region have made a passionate appeal to the Local Assembly and Department of Feeder Roads to ensure that a proposed road project designed to link their community to Sekesua, a nearby farming community is constructed.

An opinion leader in the community, Tetteh Teingua who spoke on behalf of the Dadematse of the area and the community dwellers say constructing the road would enhance easy transportation between their community and the nearest commercial centre, Sekesua.

To demonstrate the commitment of authorities to undertake the project during the second term of the Kufuor administration, works began on a bridge over a nearby stream which residents say overflows its boundaries during the rainy season.

Works however halted even before the bridge could be completed and before the beginning of the road proper which has failed to see the light of day since.

Mr Tetteh Teingua said the failure to undertake the project which plan was reportedly conceived some fourteen or so years ago is posing a great deal of inconvenience to the people of the two communities with the worst affected being traders and students.

The Dawa-Sekesua road would have made travelling between the two communities shorter but the two groups are forced to take a longer route to and from one another for their trading and education needs.

“Our problem is that they began the construction of the bridge to make way for the road and they failed to complete the work,” said the opinion leader. “The completion of the bridge [and road] would link our community to the Sekesua market.”

According to him, the absence of the project has complicated transportation challenges for the members of the community.

“Our challenge is that the failure to complete the bridge makes it impossible for us to cross the stream to the market centre when it overflows its banks,” said the 78-year-old who made a passionate appeal to authorities to ensure that work resumes on the road and bridge.

Assemblyman for the Mensah-Dawa Electoral Area, Samson Atter Kwame in an interview decried the effects of the situation on the day to day activities of the people.

“The community [traders] go to the Sekesua market, the children if they complete primary here, attend junior high school in Sekesua and during the rainy season when the stream overflows, they can’t cross to Sekesua,” said Samson Atter Kwame, pleading that the road and bridge be done.

Asked how this was affecting the transportation needs of the people, he said “it’s affecting them because they cannot carry their farm goods to the market and the cars too cannot cross to collect their farm goods to the market so when it gets to the rainy season like this, their farm goods are always rotting in the farms.”