President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo
The Youth of Tatale-Sanguli District of the Northern Region have appealed to government to intervene in fixing their roads as the rains were aggravating the already deplorable ones in the district.
They said the Tatale-Sanguli district was the only one without a kilometre of tarred road whether within the towns or outside linking other districts of the Region.
A statement signed by Joseph Machante, Kwame Gmayiwunor and Godwin Nambo, all youth leaders of the District said it was “extremely disheartening and disappointing to have a district with this deplorable state of the road even not a kilometre or a pothole has been patched in the district by gravel.”
The statement said Tatale/Sanguli was a food basket community for the whole nation.
“In a year, thousands of tonnes of yam is produced in Tatale/Sanguli and interestingly, Tatale/Sanguli yam is one of the best among all yam producing areas of the country.
In the 2018/2019 and 2019/2020 national budget presentations in Parliament, Mr Ken Ofori Atta, Minister of Finance mentioned the Tatale-Zabzugu-Tatale roads as one of the roads to be tarred to open up the place for both commercial and trans-African trade.
Apart from being a major food-producing district, Tatale, the District capital is only four Kilometres from neighbouring Togo, which makes it the shortest route for travelers from Ghana to Togo, Benin and Nigeria and Vice versa.
With the onset of rains, drivers spend about three hours to ply the road, which is only about 6o kilomtres from Tatale to Yendi, a situation that also gave the armed robbers the field day to attack the wobbling vehicles.
To prevent any future calamity, the youth said: “we the people of TATALE/SANGULI district are calling on the government to come to our aid by doing something on this road, for our lives are so dear to us.
“Farmers find it extremely difficult to transport their yam and other food crops such as beans, millet, guinea corn, rice, maize among others to the market centres due to the bad nature of the road leading to post-harvest losses and human deaths.”
The statement said due to the bad nature of the road, ambulances found it difficult to transport emergency cases to Zabzugu and Yendi for further treatment.
“On November 22, the Tatale-Yendi road which is an international road was included; in the nation’s budget as one of the roads to be constructed in 2019, but as we are speaking now, not even a heap of gravel has been dumped on the road.
“Government goes Government comes yet our road is still same. From Tatale border to that of the Togo border is a stone throw and yet theirs is tarred, but Tatale border generates revenue every day to the state coffers and yet the road is in this deplorable state.
The Youth called on President Akufo-Addo to fulfil his promise to the youth of the area to tar the road for them to be connected to other parts of the country with struggles on bad roads.
