ASIP market abandoned over construction defects

A market built at Tanodumase, a sprawling farming community in the Atwima-Mponua District, under the Agriculture Sector Improvement Project (ASIP), to help boost food production, has not been used for the past 13 years.

The stores, sheds and sanitary facilities are now fast deteriorating. This had come about due to the failure of the contractors to provide compact pavements, making the place soggy and completely unusable anytime it rained.

Mr Abdulai Dramani, the assembly member for the area, expressed anger and disappointment at the situation when he together with some elders and members of the unit committee, conducted a team of reporters’ of the Ghana News Agency (GNA), round to inspect the project.

The journalists were there under a STAR-Ghana’s sponsored media auditing and tracking of development projects – an initiative designed to aid transparency and accountability in local governance.

Mr Dramani said the facility was meant to operate as a weekly market where farmers in more than 20 cluster communities could sell their farm produce to save them the trouble of traveling long distances to markets at Bibiani and other big towns.

Apart from the slowdown of the economic activities of the people, there is the other downside - deprivation of the district assembly of revenue. Mr Dramani said he has been trying over the years to get the assembly to fix the problem, to save the huge investment from going to waste but without success.

He said to prevent weeds and rodents from taking over the market the community has turned some of the sheds into makeshift classrooms for the local Islamic primary school.

Mr Dramani renewed the appeal to the government to act quickly to salvage the investment made in the project.