The people of Old Aboye in the Wassa Amenfi East District of the Western region have made a passionate appeal to the president to come to their aid quickly or they will die of thirst.

Lack of potable water, good roads, and electricity, they contended, has made life uneasy for them in the village.

According to the village folks, the River Ankobra which is the only water body from which they drink and use to cook has been contaminated by activities of illegal miners in the area.

And owing to this situation whoever needs potable water to drink has to travel by road for about six kilometers to Bogoso to buy a sachet of ‘pure’ water or three kilometers into the bush to fetch water from a stream.

Chief of Old Aboye, Nana Badu Afriyie, who was most worried about the phenomenon told this reporter that “we have travelled to the next town to vote on several occasions but have never benefited from any good thing from governments in many years.’

Nana Badu Afriyie also noted sadly that in addition to these predicaments, when his people work hard to plant several acres of cocoa and other produce, they find it very difficult to cart their farm produce to the nearby towns and villages to sell. That, he explained, was due to the collapse of the bridge on the River Ankobra some 13 years ago.

They therefore have to carry their more than 500 bags of cocoa across the river before getting a vehicle to send them to market centres in other areas.

“For 13 years no car has entered this village because the bridge collapsed one day when the river had over flooded, separating us from the rest of Wassa.

…We have made countless calls to authorities but to no avail,” he lamented.

What was even more worrying to the residents was what they described as the unconcerned attitude of the current District Chief Executive of Wassa Amenfi East, Stephen Badu Acheampong.

According to them, even though the DCE is a native of the village he has turned a deaf ear to their numerous calls.

Nana Badu Afriyie was so surprised that their own relative, the DCE, no longer calls them or answers their calls, neither does he invite them for a discussion about the development of their village where he stayed for a long time and knows all the challenges they are talking about.

An opinion leader in the village, Obaapanyin Yaa Korkor, reiterated the need for a motorable bridge to be constructed for the village as women who go into labour have to be carried by several men for more than an hour before they reach the next town and search for a vehicle to send her to the hospital.

In this regard, the residents appealed to the president to help them by constructing at least a borehole in the town.

“Because we have no bridge no cars come to this town; we do not have clean, portable water and several other challenges we face here has contributed to the shutting down of the only school we have here,” Obaapanyin Korkor said.

…teachers who are posted here refuse to stay since they say life here is difficult, so all our children are home with us doing all sorts of things we would not want to them to do,” the Obaapanyin noted sadly.

When Today made attempts to seek DCE’s reaction on the story, he told our reporter bluntly that he was too busy to talk.