Chief flouts EPA's directive

THERE IS uneasy calm at the once peaceful Bakado Bakano, a suburb of Cape Coast over sand winning activities along the beach of the Fosu Lagoon in Cape Coast.

What perhaps, is making the issue more interesting and complicated is that a prominent Chief in the Cape Coast area is at the centre of the controversy.

Residents of the suburb raised issues over the sand-winning at the Lagoon’s beach early this year when one Nana Afari Twasko, a sand-winning Contractor and Chief of Efutu, a village near Cape Coast started his operations there.

Saturday, June 3, 2007, witnessed one of the ugliest scenes in the resident’s agitations against the unlawful winning of sand along the lagoon’s beach where the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is on record to have banned sand-winning activities more than a decade ago.

On that fateful day, police personnel were allegedly called in by the contractor when the residents blocked the main road linking the suburb and the district hospital with pieces of logs and cement blocks to prevent the contractor from conveying the sand from the beach; an operation seen by the residents as detrimental to the environment in general.

When this reporter arrived at the scene, tension had heightened resulting in the firing of tear-gas by police personnel to disperse the large crowd.

Horrendously, the police personnel present protected the contractor’s workers to load assembled tipper trucks with sand and conveyed them away.

In the ensuing run-for-your-life amidst the firing of tear gas by the police, four protesters sustained serious injuries whereas other residents also alleged they were beaten up by police personnel.

Around 4.00 pm on the same day, a big crowd converged around the lagoon and rendered insults and insinuations on the government, the police, the Municipal Assembly and the contractors for flouting the ban by the EPA’s.

In separate interviews with some of the protesters mostly fishermen, they threatened that their next confrontation with the contractor would take a different form since they have realised that the Chief does not understand diplomacy.

Sweating profusely, Kobina Atta, a fisherman remarked that some years back many young people mostly from Amanful, a suburb of Cape Coast were rendered jobless when they were stopped by the EPA from winning sand at the Lagoon.

He wondered why the Chief who is supposed to know better would flout the laws of the land whereas the young ones abide by the law.

He cautioned further that the residents would modify their strategy in ensuring that the chief stop winning sand at the beach.

He further warned that they will advise themselves since they have seen that the police have decided to protect the Chief to continue his illegalities.