The three-day tour of President John Dramani Mahama to the Tarkwah Nsuaem Municipality in the Western Region last week, may have come and gone, but a multi-million question keeps popping up in the minds of both indigenes and residents alike.
The indigenes and residents do not understand why officials of the Tarkwa Nsuaem Municipal Assembly (TNMA), led by their Municipal Chief Executive (MCE), Mrs. Christina Cobbinah, could hastily, prior to the arrival of the President last Wednesday, move to paint a good picture of the area, which road network is massively perforated with potholes.
It is on record that Tarkwa, which is the capital of the Municipality, has one of the poorest road networks in the country, but the desperate move with which the Assembly attempted to cover it up, has exposed the Assembly, MCE and Regional Minister to ridicule.
Information available to The Chronicle indicates that a day before President Mahama’s tour of the municipality, the MCE and the Assembly forcibly ordered officials of the Town and Country Planning Department to work day and night to ensure that they completed the patching of the uncountable potholes that had made roads in the area un-motorable.
The road patching exercise, which was undertaken by officials of the Town and Country Planning Department of the TNMA, day and night, started from Tarkwa Cyanide to Tarkwa Market Circle.
The paper gathered that the hasty move by the Assembly was to avoid embarrassing the Regional minister, Paul Evans Aidoo, and Mrs. Christina Cobbinah before the President.
Some residents took pictures of the hardworking staff of the Town and Country Planning Department of the TNMA, working at night, with the pictures going viral on social media, exposing the Regional Minister, MCE and Assembly to ridicule.
To make matters worse, the issue has become a subject of discussion on radio and on the lips of indigenes of Tarkwa, as many of them had already concluded that the unusual patching of the road was due to the arrival of the President to the area and not the people.
One of the indigenes, who gave his name as Nana Kojo Adjei, could not believe his eyes when he saw the Assembly staff working day and night to fix the road.
“In fact, I could not believe my eyes, seeing the Assembly [staff] working at night to patch the road. So I asked myself, what is going on, only for a friend to tell me that the President was due in town the next day,” Nana Kojo Adjei explained.
A local journalist, who took shots of the Assembly staff working at night, told this paper that he could not understand why the office of the TNMA acted that way to paint a god picture of the area, as if there was nothing wrong with the roads.
“Every local journalist and indigenes here knows that our roads are bad. So, to me, that was an opportunity for the President to feel how wretched our roads are, but for the Assembly to tell a good story about the roads to the President was very unfortunate.”
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