Two Children Drown At Kasoa

The dead bodies of two children were yesterday found floating in a salt pit at Kasoa Nyanyano in the Central Region. The two, Naa Deidei Tetteh, four, and Godfred Asiedu, five, had gone missing on Thursday afternoon, only for their bodies to be found floating in the salt pit yesterday morning. Naa Deidei�s mother, Mrs. Regina Tetteh, had reported to the Kasoa Nyanyano Police on Thursday that her daughter was missing.The police directed that a report be made to the chief of Nyanyano to instruct the �gong gong� beater to send out information about the missing children. Narrating the incident, Naa Deidei�s father, Mr. Richard Tetteh, said the children were not found until early yesterday morning when his wife found them floating in the salt pit close to their house.They called the police to the scene and they retrieved the bodies and started their investigations. When the police were contacted, they would not go into details, except to say that they had begun investigations into the case. When the Daily Graphic visited the scene, the bodies of the two had been taken from the salt pit and taken to the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital mortuary. Sources close to the families said the police suspected no foul play. They described how fish had started eating up the bodies of the two as they floated in the pit. They added, however, that the unfenced salt pit, a result of salt winning by an entrepreneur, Mr. Benjamin Afful, posed a danger to children. The sources said the owner of the artificial salt pit had been invited by the Kasoa Nyanyano Police to give a statement. Mr. Tetteh blamed Mr. Afful�s negligence for the death of his child, while Mrs. Tetteh wept uncontrollably, with sympathizers trying to console her. Mr. Tetteh appealed to the police to thoroughly investigate the matter and called on the community leaders to ensure that the area was fenced to avoid further loss of lives. The artificial salt lake, measuring about 70 by 30 square meters, is very close to Mr. Tetteh�s house and several others in the area.Some parts of the lake are shallow and one can see the base, while other parts, particularly the part where the children were found floating, appear to be deep. Residents said the incident was the second to occur in the area. In the earlier incident, a 20-year-old man had been found in another salt pit in the same vicinity some time ago.