Residents of Akuoko, a predominantly farming community in the Agona East District of the Central region, have made a passionate appeal to the powers that be to relieve them from their continuous unbearable living conditions.
According to the residents, their livelihood is characterised by lack of potable water, healthcare, educational facilities, electricity and good roads.
A visit to the community recently revealed that the residents depend largely on a pouch of water from a valley that dries up often.
The situation, Today further gathered, compels majority of them to walk a distance of about 4 miles to villages such as Kujos, Kwamekwei, Kwadwoakwa and Bontuase to draw water from a salty hand-dug well for drinking and other domestic use.
According to Afia Arko, who processes gari herself, many of the women in the community who mostly engage in gari processing, “could only manage to use small amount of water, even when dirty, to wash a large quantity of cassavas before processing them into gari, a development which raises health concerns.”
And compounding the water situation is the lack of a health facility and access to electricity in the village, whiles the only educational facility available was a day-care-centre.
According to the spokesperson for the Odikro of the village, Opanin Kwaku Mensah, the children are compelled to trek a 4-mile-distance to Kujos in order to have access to basic education.
For his part, 80-year-old Abusuapanyin of the village, Isaac Djabaah, indicated that due to the bad state of the road from the village to other villages and towns, the only means of transportation were two motorbikes which travel to and fro to Akuoko once daily.
“The motorbike riders work in Kwanyarko township, a 5-mile journey from here. As a result, in case of any emergency the motor riders have to be called in from Kwanyarko to Akuoko to carry a sick person to seek medical attention in Kwanyarko. Sometimes, the sick person dies before arriving at the health facility,” he added.
To this end, the residents made a passionate appeal to the district assembly and the central government to help address their problems.
Some of the young ones in the village indicated their intention to leave the place soon for where life would be a bit comfortable.
And following the plights of Akuoko residents, a Ghanaian philanthropist based in Atlanta, USA, Madam Abena Pokua, who is also the founder of a non-governmental organisation (NGO), Helping Hand, over the weekend donated bags of rice, oil, soaps, toiletries, slippers, clothes,150 adult shoes and 100 children shoes to the residents.
She, therefore, encouraged other individuals and groups to support the underprivileged in remote areas of the country.
She also appealed to the government to urgently provide the people with essential social amenities.
“Although I don’t hail from here (Akuoko), I deem it part of my social duty to put smiles on the faces of the people of Akuoko,” she added.
For his part, the NGO’s representative in Ghana, Mr. Samuel Obeng Ansah, indicated that the gesture was the third of such donations that Madam Pokua had made.
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