Kwabre East: Constituents cry over neglect
Kwabre East Constituency, is not only one of the politically active constituencies in the Ashanti Region, but also hosts the dreaded Akan shrine, Antoa Nyamaa.
It is also known for its Kente weaving exploits.
Advertisement
The constituency is home to the Adanwomase Kente weaving centre, Ntonso Adinkra carving centre and the Ahwiaa woodcraft centre.
The famous Antoa is a river god where people go to seek solution to their problems
In spite of the constituency’s tourism potentials, one of the main challenges facing the area is the lack of good road network to ease transportation.
The few town roads in the constituency are not tarred and becomes difficult to ply during the rainy season.
However the Member of Parliament (MP) for the area, Ms Francisca Oteng-Mensah,has assured her constituents that she was in constant touch with the Ministry of Roads and Highways to improve on the road network in the constituency.
Location
The constituency, with its capital at Mamponteng, shares boundaries with Sekyere South District to the north; Kumasi Metropolis and Asawase to the south; Ejisu Municipality to the east and Afigya Kwabre District to the west.
There are 42 settlements administered under one parliamentary constituency, two town councils, four area councils and 31 electoral areas.
Economic activities
Apart from Kente weaving which is more of an innate skill, the people are also into artefact carving, trading and farming.
Indeed, the Adanwomase Kente weaving centre in the constituency rubs shoulders with Bonwire, the hub of Kente weaving in the country.
However the rivalry between the two towns as to which of them makes better kente knows no bounds. Ironically, the two towns are just a few miles apart but belong to two different districts. Bonwire is in the Juaben Municipality.
Politics
Kwabre East is arguably one of the strongholds of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) in the region. The opposition parties rarely make any inroads in the constituency.
In the last two elections, the constituency recorded the highest popular votes for the NPP in the region.
Consequently, the residents, including the chiefs, appealed to the President to ‘compensate’ or ‘reward’ the MP, Ms Oteng-Mensah, with a ministerial appointment.
And the President seemed to have acquiesced to this request as the MP is currently the Deputy Minister-designate for Gender, Children and Social Protection.
Development
In October 2019, during his tour of the region in the run-up to the December 2020 election, President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, cut sod for the construction of a 5.5 Kilometre town road in the municipality.
However, in August this year, the Chief of Mamponteng, Barima Saasi Ayeboafo II, and his people bared their teeth at the government for neglecting them and abandoning the project.
Barima Ayeboafo II complained bitterly about the lack of development in the area and the complete government neglect notwithstanding the fact that the people there loved the party.
He said the town road project was abandoned just after the 2020 election.
He said it was time for the traditional authority to speak up and demand their fair share of the national cake. “I have kept quiet for a long time. We want to see development in the area before election 2024,” he said.
Barima Ayeboafo said a market project started in 2012 had been at a standstill since 2013. That, according to the traditional leader, had led the traders to sell at unauthorised places following their evacuation from the old market to pave way for a new one.
In the same month, the youth of the town and taxi drivers also went on a demonstration burning car tyres to demand for better roads.
They vowed to embark on such demonstrations every two weeks until they saw an improvement in the road infrastructure in the town.
Concerns of Kente weavers
The Secretary to the Adanwomase Kente Weavers Association,Eric Boakye Yiadom, told the Daily Graphic that due to the bad nature of the roads, their business has slowed down as people preferred going to the Central Market to buy their Kente than making the arduous journey to Adanwomase.
He said that coupled with the high cost of twine used for weaving the kente have affected their business.
Aside from the Kente weaving, he said the community also engaged in eco tourism to generate income for community projects
He believed that if the roads were constructed, it would improve the livelihoods of the people and increase productivity.
Neglect
The National Democratic Congress` Constituency Chairman, Alhaji Fatao Iliaso, also shared the views of Barima Ayeboafo II and said the NPP had neglected the constituency even though the party usually garnered lots of votes from the area.
He said most of their roads were in deplorable states, with most of the public schools also lacking infrastructure to accommodate the increasing number of students.
He admitted that no government could solve all the problems facing the constituency during its tenure in office, but was of the view that if the government devoted a little attention to the area as it did for others, “there would have been some improvement in the development of the area”.
Addressing the people of the region during the sod-cutting ceremony for the Suame interchange project in October 2022 in Kumasi, the sector Minister, Kwasi Amoako Atta, acknowledged the challenge facing the people of Kwabre and assured them that by the end of the year, work would start on the road project for the constituency.
He said the ministry had finished with the selection of the contractors and that very soon, they would move to site to start work on the roads.
Fair share
When contacted, the MP for the area, Ms Oteng-Mensah said the government had not neglected the people of Kwabre East and assured them of some development.
Ms Oteng-Mensah said her office had been in constant touch with the Ministry of Roads and Highways “because the road network in my area is very bad and we need them fixed”.
She said since coming into office in 2017, one of the first things her office did was to assess the roads in the constituency and the needs of each town, compiled the records and submitted the list to the sector minister and also lobbied for support.
According to her, the so-cutting for the rehabilitation of Mamponteng town roads by the President in 2019 was the result of such consultations.
The project, however, could not be completed due to what she said was a disagreement between the contractors.
She said the disagreement was such that the two entities, one local and the other foreign, could not reconcile their differences and it affected the project.
Nevertheless, she said the project had been repackaged and the ministry was almost through with the procurement for the contractor to move to site.
She said the Fawode-Adwuman and Wonoo town roads were all awarded on contracts but “due to some challenges, the contractors have moved from site and were unable to complete the projects”.
She admitted that some of the reasons were financial while others were internal to the contractors. She, however, noted that all those projects that had stalled had been repackaged and awarded on contract.
Apart from the old road projects, she said new road projects had been added to the programme and “next year will see massive infrastructure development in Kwabre”.
Secondary City
On the abandoned market project, Ms Oteng-Mensah said the Ministry of Local Government, Decentralisation and Rural Development had secured funding through the World Bank under the Secondary Cities Support Project which was meant for districts that were fast urbanising.
She said during the needs assessment of Kwabre East, the market was prioritised and she was hopeful that the project would soon be completed for the traders to move back and have a decent place to ply their trade.
Ms Oteng-Mensah assured the residents that her office and that of the municipality were working to ensure that Kwabre East also got its share of the national cake.