Government to find lasting peace along frontiers

Ashanti-Kpoeta (Volta Region), 19th July 99 ?

Mr Kofi Totobi-Quakyi, Minister for National Security, has said government is carefully planning an approach to establish a framework necessary to ensure lasting peace and co-existence among communities along Ghana's eastern frontier.

He, therefore, called on such communities to exercise restraint as government comes out with a sustainable means for resolving any impasse.

Mr Quakyi said this during a fact-finding visit to the three Ashanti communities of Kpoeta, Achem and Kpodzi to meet their chiefs and elders following renewed land and border disputes between them on one hand and Hanyigba-Todzi in Togo on the other hand.

He assured the people that the government was in close contact with officials from the Togolese side to find an amicable solution to the problem.

He cautioned the people not to do anything that would aggravate the already fragile security situation in the area despite the inconvenience and pain being experienced following the conflict.

Alhaji Seidu Iddi, Volta Regional Minister, asked the people to allow peace and unity to prevail among them in order to facilitate government's development efforts.

"If you allow a crack in a wall in your bedroom, then, be prepared to sleep with a lizard", Alhaji Iddi said and urged them to present a common front to ward off infiltrators.

Togbe Gadze VIII, Paramount Chief of Kpoeta, speaking through a spokesman, said for sometime now, the people of Togo had been encroaching on their farmlands in Ghana.

However, between March and June this year, the situation worsened when the Togolese set ablaze two hamlets belonging to Mr Noah Gavlo and Mr Komla Axovi, while Mr Holy Adzaho was attacked with a cutlass on his farm.

The spokesman said similar clashes occurred in 1983 and that of 1995 led to the death of Mr Adzawu Arnold, which was resolved after arbitration between the two sides.

He, therefore, appealed to the government to facilitate action to resolve the issue.