By: Evans Attah Akangla & Anthony Egbeako| ignewss.com| Tafi-Atome
Residents of Tafi Atome in the Volta Region’s Afadzato South District are pleading with the government to repair broken bridges across the Ahavor, Tobi, and Bunya rivers as well as the adjacent roads that are posing as death traps in order to improve easy accessibility and socioeconomic activity.
The devastated residents expressed their dissatisfaction with successive governments for failing to upgrade these infrastructure facilities, which had cost them a lot ever since the bridge collapsed in 2005 and made life intolerable for them, particularly for women and children, whenever rivers overflowed their banks.
The residents revealed that several attempts made to curb the challenges with authorities proved futile affecting their lives and economic activities.
Farmers and traders on the other hand have also shared their grievances saying they always find it difficult to cross the rivers to their farms located beyond the rivers whenever there is a heavy downpour since part of the footbridges had been washed away by the heavy rains.
They further noted that they have been cut-off from markets to make earns-meet due to unavailability of vehicles to convey farm produce as they earn nothing.
They lamented that transportation fares has also gone high unexpectedly by motorists who convey products to the market as the road network is in its deplorable state.
They added that school children who cross the river find it stressful going to school whenever the rivers overflow as some of them sometimes get drowned in these rivers when they fall in.
In September 2018, a mother and her two children were nearly drowned, and more recently, a young girl went from the footbridge Hon. Angela Alorwu-Tay, MP for Afadzato South Constituency, had built as she was coming home from work.
They are therefore calling on the central government, the Afadzato South District Assembly and other responsible entities to come to their aid to fix the broken bridges and deplorable road network to augment their livelihood.