FOODSTUFFS ROT IN SENE DISTRICTS

FROM MICHAEL SARPONG MFUM, KWAME DANSO

Foodstuffs are getting rotten in the Sene East and West Districts of the Brong Ahafo Region because of unmotorable roads to cart the produce to market centers in the two districts and beyond.

The two districts are the hub of farming in the region-producing yam, rice, cassava, maize and livestock  and many other crops not for consumption only in the region but the entire country.

Farmers in the two districts are in a state of hopelessness after investing much into their work and not been able to break even due to bad roads. Apart from the Kwame Danso town roads, which are tarred, there is not a single road tarred in the Sene West District, that of Sene East district is worst because not a single road is tarred in the district.

With the setting in of the rains, the roads have become slippery because of its clay nature, which has made it very difficult to ply the roads to the hinterlands of the two districts to cart foodstuff to the market centres. Communities worst hit in the Sene West include; Bantama, Wiase, Akyemede Bator, Menko, Lemu, Kofi Gyan, Chaboba and Kyeamekrom. Sene East communities where farmers cannot cart their foodstuff are Bassa, Bodinka, Nyankotore, Premuase, Kojokrom, Defour Bator. Buyers outside the districts buy the foodstuff at a cheap price; the famers have no option than to sell it to at least get something.

Kofi Anyobode a yam farmer at Chaboba, a major yam producing community in the Sene West District in an interview with The Independentsaid he took a loan from the Bank and it would be very difficult for him to break even to repay the loan though he had a good harvest, carting his produce to the farming centres has become a problem even tractors cannot ply the road.

The Sene West District Director of Agriculture, S.Y. Apiiga says farmers in the district are really suffering.

“We are facing a lot of marketing problems because of bad road network in the district this has led to collapse of a yam market we used to have in Kwame Danso. Because of the bad roads people were not patronizing the market this lead to collapse of the market. Last year we had a bump harvest of maize and we are finding it difficult to sell, the price of maize went as a low as GH50.00 cedis. I want to appeal to organizations and individuals who need yam, maize to come to the Sene districts because we have a lot,” he noted.

The 31 kilometer Atebubu-Kwame Danso road has been abandoned three years after the late President Prof. John Evans Atta Mills cut a sod for the construction of the road at the cost GH¢32.5 million which was supposed to be a single-seal bituminous surface dressing and single-dash carriage two-way road awarded to Wa-based Contractor A and N. The contract was subsequently re-awarded to GHANEM Construction Firm but nothing has been done on the road.

Attached is the picture of Vehicles stacked on Kwame Danso-Atebubu road.