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The headline at the back page of the Wednesday December 2, 2009 edition of the Daily Graphic read �Cocoa Locked Up � Due To Bad Roads�. 30,000 bags of cocoa were locked up in the Amenfi West District because access routes had deteriorated terribly. The question that people in the cities should be asking themselves is �why?� why are the roads in the cocoa generating areas so bad as to be impassable?It is a fact that Ghana obtains between 35% from the export of cocoa. One would therefore have thought that Ghanaian government would be interested to open up these cocoa growing areas with good roads in roads order to make transporting cocoa to the parts painless. In La Cote d�Ivoire, for example, the tarred roads in their cocoa-growing areas come up to the border with Ghana. Not in Ghana, Along the cocoa-growing borders from Brong Ahafo, through to the southern-most part of Ghana, there is virtually no tarred road. The road up to the Elubo border was constructed not because of cocoa transportation but because it is a gateway between Ghana and La Cote d�Ivoire. The situation in the Volta Region and other cocoa areas in the Eastern Region are not better. There appears to be a policy behind the neglected of areas where the nations� wealth comes from. A look at the state of the mining areas confirms this. The people in the mining areas have the filthiest and most contaminated water, little land space for farming because the mining companies have been allowed by the government to take over the farmlands. The people do not even get appropriate compensation for the destruction of their cocoa farms. Although the average cocoa tree, in its lifetime of fifty years, could yield, on average, nine hundred Ghana Cedis worth of cocoa, the government has pegged the compensation price per cocoa tree at Five Ghana Cedis. Even here, several of the mining companies refuse to pay the farmers. When they protest, the government unleashes the police and soldiers upon the people, and are beaten. When the mining companies spill cyanide and other poison into their rivers, the people receive no compensation or measures to deal with long-term effects on the health of the people or their environment. The cocoa farming areas have no clinics or health posts. When they get bitten by snakes, they do not get medical help, yet there is a Cocoa Clinic in Accra, where cocoa is not produced. Most of these areas have no electricity. They have the worst schools in Ghana, especially since teachers do not want to go to such places. Their children do not get Cocobod scholarships. They are the only group of private investors in Ghana who do not have the right to sell their products at prices determined by market forces. They do not receive ex gratia awards. In spite of these, they are always called upon to be patriotic by not selling their products to the higher bidder. If they do, they are called smugglers. Since they have no good roads, they have to travel to the towns in relatively distant places to purchase their needs� The traders who walk to sell things to them sell at high prices. If there is a road at all, they are usually pot-holed and dusty roads. Most of them have to carry bags and bags of cocoa beans on their heads across long distances to the buying centers. Given a life like this, why would some of them not feel tempted if they have a better price from elsewhere? Recently, a friend of mine remarked that cocoa farmers are pampered by the government. It was not his fault. He has not seen a typical cocoa farmer before. The general poverty among cocoa farmers is disgraceful, after they put in all their efforts to get foreign exchange for the rest of the country. The rulers of this country must turn their attention to the cocoa farmers. They do not ask for much. Just a good road will suffice. But do the politicians care? In the current fight by �footsoldiers� for their �legitimate demands�, who speaks for the cocoa farmers? If no one fights for the cocoa farmer, then people should shut up if they are tempted to cross the border.