Woes of Western Region-Past Govts blamed

The spokesman for the Nsuem chief who is now claiming the ownership of the Nkrumah's body, Mr. Joshua Ekow Armah, has told newsmen at Nsuaem in the Western Region that though Dr. Kwame Nkrumah did make some mistakes as a president of Ghana, those mistakes certainly did not include neglect on account of one's race, religion and region, as the Western Region has been subjected to by almost all the successive leaders of this country.

The Western Region, apart from being the producer of the first president of Ghana, is also one of the main, if not the main breadbasket of this country, but our roads are terribly bad.

Factories in the region have also been closed down for no apparent reasons, in addition to the fact that our lands are being taken away by people from outside, he said.

According to Armah, when Afrifa and his cohorts overthrew the Kwame Nkrumah's government in 1966, he promised the people of the Western Region that he was not going to construct roads in the region because of one man - Kwame Nkrumah.

This policy or pronouncement, continued Armah, appears to have been followed by almost all the successive governments hence the present sorry state of the Western Region, "despite the fact that it is the producer of gold, bauxite, manganese, rubber, cocoa among others."

Armah further told the reporters at the last Wednesday's news conference that a glance at Sekondi, the regional capital, would reveal that it is now a shadow of itself, not forgetting the bad nature of the road from Esiama to Nkroful, the birth place of Dr. Nkrumah, which he described as a serious dent in our national pride.

He also said the present nature of the road from Agona Nkwanta through Nsuem to Tarkwa, the second capital of the region, is a constant physical reminder of the policy of neglect of the Western Region, adding that any fair minded person who has used the road once will readily believe in the existence of this policy of neglect and its strict compliance.

The spokesman, whose speech touched on almost all the problems facing the region, told the reporters that residents in the mining communities across the region also have an enormous price to pay in terms of environmental degradation, pollution and problem of mercury poisoning as a result of economic activities.

"As if what we have said above is not enough, large stretches of our land are given to individuals living outside our area under various large scale mining concessions and other concessions.

Many of these individuals have no capital, machinery, equipment or technical know-how to use the land for the purpose for which they obtain the concessions.

The land is kept idle, and it is monopolized for years with the chief and his people having no access to it," he said.

Armah continued that though the problems and the general neglect that the Western Region is going through are often discussed at public places and serious gatherings.

With the political parties both in government and opposition also talking about it, the topic still remains a college debate. The neglect, he noted, still continued unabated.

The spokesman further told the journalists who were listening with rapt attention as he read his thesis that during the NPP congress held in Sekondi recently, President Kufuor was reported to have expressed regret at the poor roads in the region and therefore pledged his government's determination to tackle the road network.

Joshua Armah, who is also a British trained legal practitioner, further said though this publicly declared policy and commitment by the President whom he described as an astute lawyer is a music to their ears, they still have the hope that the President intends to deliver the people of the Western Region from "the bondage which General Akwasi Amankwaa Afrifa forced them into because of Kwame Nkrumah."