Over 3000 peasant farmers living in Nkurunkan Kyeremanten Tsremati Yoyim near Koforidua in the Yilo Krobo municipality of the Eastern Region have vowed not to vote if politicians fail to contrast a road for them before the 2020 general elections.
According to them, politicians keep throwing dust into their eyes every 4 years when they come asking for their votes.
“This year, it will be war, no politician would be allowed to campaign in the community if they fail to construct the road to the area,” they said.
It is believed that most pregnant women don’t go for antenatal during their pregnancy period because of the distance between their villages to the nearest town to get hospital services.
The roads that lead to the next town, Nkrunkan, is very bad to the extent that, most pregnant women either die or lose their children on their way to access a health center deliver. Again, the villages have no good road to allow for a smooth ride on motorcycles for women in labor unless they walk through a deplorable mountainous route to access healthcare.
Recently, a 15-year-old girl Mavis Tetteh died while being carried on the back of some men in the community who were rushing her to the hospital through the deplorable mountainous route.
The deceased girl was suffering from severe abdominal pains.
The aggrieved residents have threatened to boycott the 2020 general election if the roads leading to over 15 villages are not fixed before the said election.
According to them, even though they have launched complaints about countless occasions about the nature of their roads to the appropriate authorities, they remained in a poor state.
Some of the residents noted that many pregnant women in labor died while being carried on a wooden structure to the nearest hospital through the deplorable mountainous route.
Tsremati Yoyim and other neighboring Farming communities such as Kplawu, Dowano, Odavey, Kokofu, Wrekonya, Dorguanor, and others all located in Yilo Krobo Municipality are known to be the food basket of the municipality, but there is no road network linking the communities to the market centers, hence farm produces such as vegetables, cassava, and plantain mostly rot in the bush.
Farmers, particularly Women and Children, carry on their heads; the farm produces through bushes to descend a high rocky mountain to market centers to sell for income.
The lack of road to the communities has discouraged the youth who have ditched farming and migrated to urban areas in search of alternate jobs.
Source: Mybrytfmonline/Evans Boateng
