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The chiefs and people of Abura Akyempim in the Ahanta West District of the Western region have reiterated their call on government to compensate them for laying Ghana Gas Company’s pipelines through their community.

Nana Kweku Mensah IV who made the call at a grand durbar to round off their 2016 Kundum festival stressed that the compensation should be made before December 7.

According to him, the chiefs and people of the farming community are now finding it difficult to feed themselves as a result of failure by government to compensate them for using their land meant for farming activities.

The chief insisted his people could not fathom government’s reluctance in paying their compensation when some of the affected communities in other parts of the region had already been taken care of.

Wondering whether the Mahama-led National Democratic Congress administration wants all his subjects to die out of starvation before paying the compensation, Nana Kweku Mensah reminded government to treat the issue with the urgency it deserved.

He lamented that in spite of numerous appeals and petitions by himself, elders and opinion leaders of the Abura Akyempim community to government to compensate them, nothing concrete had been done.

Nana Kweku Mensah said these appeals followed government’s decision to compensate some of the affected communities in the region, including those in the Nzema area, something he described as a discrimination against his people.

The Abura Akyempim chief also called on government to honour its promise of providing facilities for the community’s clinic which was constructed by the Ghana Rubber Estate Limited.

He also reminded government on the need to fulfill yet another promise of reconstructing the few kilometer roads leading to the clinic in the town, supply electricity to the Princess Town junction and also give the Abura vocational Institute which was formerly manned by World Vision International, a face-lift.

In his response, the regional minister, Paul Evans Aidoo, assured the people of government’s readiness to develop their community and therefore urged them to disabuse their minds of any deliberate act of discrimination against them.

He, however, said the December 7 deadline for the payment of the compensation package would not be possible as the Valuation Board had still not finished with its report on the Abura Akyempim land to enable government decide on the actual sum of money to be given the community.

The Regional minister noted that the delay in the payment of their compensation was also due to government scrutiny to ensure that the package goes to the right people so as to avoid any litigation that might arise after it had been released.

Buttressing his claim with a situation at Kasanworado in the Sekondi-Takoradi metropolis where four different families are allegedly fighting each other over their compensation package, Mr Aidoo said this had served as an eye opener and that government would not repeat that mistake of releasing money to affected communities without first doing its homework well to avert any future problem.

This notwithstanding, he assured all communities affected by the Ghana Gas Company‘s pipe laying exercise that they would be adequately compensated.