The Atwima Nwabiagya district security council has destroyed a large tract of cocoa plantation at Penten for encroachment.
The Ghana Water Company had warned the continuous encroachment on land around the Offin river threatens ecological life around the Barekese water treatment headworks, which supplies about 80 percent of potable water to Kumasi and environs The facility currently produces 30 million gallons of potable water from the river daily.
Manager at the headworks, Opoku Ware, said human activities pose huge threat to future water production for consumers in the Ashanti region.
He said future generations might struggle with access to potable water “as we have seen a massive encroachment on the river, it will get to a point that the coming generation would not have enough water”. According to him, “the activities of the farmers bring a lot of silt into the river making extraction difficult”.
District Chief Executive for Atwima Nwabiagya, Nana Asare Bediako, said the farmers have been recalcitrant in heeding calls to halt farming around the dam. “We won’t sit down for calamity to befall us before we act,” he said. “Before I became DCE, I met with the farmers and told them not to enter the river banks but they won’t listen”.
The affected farmers lamented the effects of losing their cocoa farms. “This is my only source of livelihood and now I am done…I can’t look after my family again” Kwaku retorted. Armed policemen drawn from the Suame and Abuakwa divisions supervised the exercise, which is expected to last for a month to clear all encroachers on the Barekese dam.
Source: 3news.com
