ON April 26, 1961, the Volta River Authority (VRA) was officially inaugurated to oversee the supply of electrical energy for industrial, commercial and domestic use in the country.
The authority’s non-power activities included a social responsibility in its areas of operation aimed at mitigating the adverse environmental effects to ensure the well-being of the communities in the Volta Basin.
As a result, many communities were submerged, leading to the resettlement of 80,000 people in 52 communities whose main occupations were farming, poultry, piggery and fishing.
Unfortunately, the houses built for settler communities leave much to be desired because the houses have deteriorated and decayed with some of them being inhabitable.
The living standards of the people continue to deteriorate because roads and streets in the communities have been washed away by erosion and the people lived without adequate electricity and potable water, which constituted an abuse of the rights of people who had sacrificed for the construction of a national asset such as the Akosombo Dam.
Although the VRA committed the cedi equivalent of US$500,000 annually to a Resettlement Trust Fund since 1996 to carry out socio-economic projects to mitigate the adverse impact of its operations on the environment, improve health and the general well-being of affected communities, the impact had failed to redeem them.
It is against this background that the initiative of the people of the VRA resettlement community at Tapa Breniase in the embattled newly created Biakoye District must be commended.
The people, under a new leadership, have decided to invest funds from a relief for flooded lands into an integrated development project.
According to reliable sources, some of the resettled communities have distributed their share of the relief funds as individual gratuity but that was not the case of Tapa Breniase because under the able leadership of their chief, Nana Baffour Kwame Oduru II, the people have undertaken many development projects with GH¢222,000 ceded to the community under the relief fund.
The projects include the drilling of two boreholes, the installation of street lights, construction of access roads and drains of which 1.5 kilometres of the roads have been scarified and compacted, as well as the erection of 25 poles for streetlights.
Nana Oduru expressed the hope that if future compensation was paid regularly, it would be possible for the community to transform the landscape to bring renewed hope of good living to the people.
According to him, there is an outstanding amount of GH¢160,000 to be paid by the contractor, Max Kyei Company Limited, pending the tarring of the access roads in the town.
Flanked by the chief were the Gyasehene of Breniase, Nana Ansah Asiedu; the Mankrado, Nana Osei Asiedu and an opinion leader, Mr Okyere Danson.
No comments:
Post a Comment