Residents of New Takoradi have once again embarked on a demonstration to express their displeasure and frustrations concerning the state of the New Takoradi Road.
This brings to five, in several years, the number of times the residents have tried through demonstrations to get the attention of the relevant authorities to get the New Takoradi Road constructed “after negotiations and pleas have fallen on deaf ears,” according to one of the demonstrators.
The less than 2-kilometer road just off the Paa Grant Round About which leads to the New Takoradi community, also serves as an access route to industries such as the Ghana Cement Company Limited, Ghana Ports and Harbours Authority, Ghana Bauxite Company, amongst others which are also present in the town.
According to reports gathered by beachfmonline.com, the demonstrators who started converging as early as 4:30 a.m. were subsequently joined by scores of the community’s residents.
The demonstrators, amidst chants of “enough is enough” and “we are dying”, lined big stones at vantage points on the road, and set tyres ablaze to serve as barricades in a bid to prevent vehicular traffic to and from the town, especially to the industries.
It took the intervention of police officers from the Regional Police Command, who dispelled the agitated crowd with “warning shots” and some lashes.
Personnel from the Ghana National Fire Service were also called upon to douse the flames from the burning tyres.
Through some dialogue, persuasion and further promises from executives of some of the industries who were present to calm the nerves of the demonstrators, the situation was eventually brought under control.
Meanwhile, the New Takoradi Health Center, a health facility that serves the community was also forced to shutdown by the disgruntled youth of New Takoradi, following the demonstration.
According to the demonstrators, the clinic which ought to be catering for the sick, rather compounds the illnesses brought by patients due to the dust generated by vehicular movement on the road.
A nurse who has been working at the New Takoradi Health Center for close to five years in an interview with beachfmonline.com lamented about how unbearable the dust from the road has made working in the clinic.
“We are suffering. Apart from being a nurse here at the clinic, I also reside here in New Takoradi. The dust is killing us. When I go around the town on medical visits, the residents usually tell me there’s no way they will seek medical attention here at the New Takoradi Health Center because of the dust,” the nurse said, as she pointed about the dust-filled clinic, without a patient in sight.
~ Godwin Kpade
– Photo Credit: George Duah
