Kwanwoma youth plead with Asantehene to install Chief for the community

The youth of Adum-Kwanwoma in the Atwima-Kwanwoma District has appealed to the Asantehene, Otumfuo Osei Tutu II, to as a matter of urgency, help install a chief for the community.

The absence of a substantive chief (Odikro), according to the youth, was not only hampering the socio-economic development of the community but had also paved the way for some unscrupulous persons to sell public lands earmarked for community infrastructural development.

Mr. Daniel Wereko Marfo, Vice-Chairman of the Concerned Youth Association of Adum-Kwanwoma, who made the call at a press conference on Friday, said the intervention of Asantehene was critical to helping halt the unbridled sale of lands by some individuals and clan heads in the community.

It would also help to straighten up the activities of regents who were overseeing traditional activities in the community. “After our Odikro, Nana Kofi Agyei IV, passed on in the year 2016, no Odikro has been installed, and due to this, the area has seen no development.”

Mr. Marfo pointed out that the continued absence of Odikro was making it absolutely impossible for the people to meet to deliberate on issues that would help bring development to the people.

He said farmlands had been allocated to some contractors to win sand for road construction, but the community had not benefited in any way from these activities, which were not only destroying the environment but also depriving some people of their livelihoods.

Mr. Marfo said the community lacked social amenities such as, police station, portable water, market, school buildings and place of convenience, but the proceeds from the sale of these lands were not being accounted for to address some of the challenges.

“There has been continuous sand winning on our lands but the town has not benefited directly from it, our farms have all been destroyed due to this activity, yet still there has not been any development in this community,” he stressed.

Mr. Marfo added that the community funeral grounds and market land had been sold to unknown people and this was raising a lot of tension among the people in the community.

Lack of streetlights at the junior and senior high schools in the community was posing a security threat to the people as some people and students had been attacked by armed robbers.

Mr. C. K. Manu, a 73-year-old man, said his farm had been destroyed by the sand-winning activity ongoing in the area, and appealed to the Asantehene to as a matter of urgency install a Chief to help put a stop to the activity.

Madam Ama Afire, a resident in the community, pointed out that the next generation would suffer if the bad activities going on in the community were not immediately addressed.