There was free-for-all-fight between angry residents of Mepe in the North Tongu District of the Volta region and workers of Beachmark Engineering Services Ltd., a construction company, which is undertaking the Self Help Electrification Project (SHEP) in the town, on Sunday, March 14, 2015, Today has learnt.
But for the timely intervention of the Regent of Mepe Paramount Royal Stool, Togbe Kwadzo Gli, and some opinion leaders in Mepe, a different story would have been told.
The fight, according to eyewitnesses, started when workers of Beachmark Engineering, numbering about twenty (20), went to Dekpo, a suburb of Mepe, on the said date to remove electricity poles erected to string aluminum wires.
That move, the eyewitnesses told Today, brought a misunderstanding between the contractors of the SHEP and the youth of Dekpo in Mepe which saw the latter (the youth) insist that they have “paid for the poles together with the labour to dig the holes for the poles.”
Consequently, the Regent of Mepe, Togbe Gli, investigated the matter and found out that employees of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) North Tongu constituency chairman, Moses Amenudor, who is the boss at Beach Engineering Services Lt., were the cause of the problem.
Today learnt that Togbe Gli subsequently asked employees of Mr. Amenudor to stop causing trouble in the area. Probing further, this paper discovered that one of the employees of Beachmark Engineering Services Ltd., one Eric Aforve, who apparently was the foreman of the contractors, admitted having charged the Dekpo youth GHC600 for every three electricity poles stringed with aluminium cable.
He also admitted to Togbe Gli of having collected GHC200.00 as advanced payment and added that he will take the remaining GHC400.00 later, Today was told. According to our sources, the Regent in his judgment observed that “it was wrong for them to unilaterally remove the electricity poles when they knew that the money was not refunded to the people.”
But for the sake of peace, Today learnt that the Regent of Mepe advised Mr. Aforve to be wary of how he carried himself around in relation to the government electrification project in the area.
Today’s findings revealed that since Mr. Tsatsu Badagbor’s programme on Dela FM, a local radio station at Mafi-Adidome in the Central North District of the Volta region and the subsequent publication in Today newspaper on the fraudulent deals in the SHEP in Mepe, the employees of Mr. Amenudor started refunding the extorted monies, but the residents refused to take back their monies, saying “they needed the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) metres badly.”
The obviously peeved residents who spoke to Today on Monday, March 16, 2015 via telephone noted that while residential buildings with many rooms were denied metres in Mepe, kiosks were rather provided with metres.
According to the residents, Mr. Doh Seko who wanted them to have the metres free later became a target for assault by some miscreants supposed to be working for the SHEP.
They alleged that the hoarded metres were now being fixed in the night.
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