An 85-year-old Nkankama resident in the Fanteakwa South District of the Eastern Region, Mamle Doleh and her likes have passionately appealed to the government for immediate intervention as the entire town has become inaccessible due to severely deteriorated roads.
Speaking to Trust FM’s reporter Cephas Narh Tsuckson during an impromptu communal labor session, organized by elderly residents themselves, dominatingly women, to repair the main road leading to the local market centre and clinic, the octogenarian (between 80 and 89 years old person) highlighted tragic incidents caused by the road’s poor condition.
She recounted heartbreaking tales of accidents resulting in deaths, and pregnant women losing their unborn babies, all due to the road’s hazardous bumps and potholes.
“We can’t even make a simple trip to the market to buy salt for our families,” she lamented. Our farm produce rots because vehicles, including motorbikes, struggle to reach our farms.”
Additionally, Mamle bemoaned a situation which forced them to embark on the communal work saying, “we carried a deceased on our shoulders while sending it to the mortuary, just yesterday.”
The communal labor, typically not scheduled for that day, drew the participation of women and children equipped with basic construction tools such as shovels, spades, and even cutlasses. Notably absent were the men, who, according to another resident, have grown weary of discussing and participating in road repair efforts.
Fifty-year-old Gladys Tettey shared her own ordeal, recounting how a truckload of cabbage destined for market sale was lost because the vehicle couldn’t navigate the treacherous road.
She echoed the frustrations of her neighbours, emphasizing the daily challenges exacerbated during rainy seasons when even children find it impossible to attend school due to impassable roads and swollen streams.
In an off-the-microphone conversation, the District Chief Executive for the area, Honorable Ernest Ofosu assured residents that a contractor was en route to collect funds for urgently reshaping the road as a temporary solution as of the time of the conversation.
The plea from Nkankama elderly residents underscores a desperate need for immediate governmental attention to restore basic mobility and safety to their community.
The area is a farming community being surrounded by several villages with similar situation, says the reporter, Tsuckson.
