Residents of Jamestown and its environs at the heart of the Greater Accra Region have called on the leadership in the area and President Nana Akufo-Addo to cease toying with individuals in the vicinity and solve their peculiar challenges.
On the maiden edition of Class91.3FM’s ‘My Community My Voice’ programme, an extension of the Executive Breakfast Show held within communities that have social challenges, with the aim to provide a platform for interaction with opinion leaders and ordinary citizens, the residents of Jamestown made a passionate appeal to their community members and the government to help in addressing the many social challenges confronting them.
The Class FM team met a poverty-stricken fishing community wallowing in poor sanitation and grappling with inadequate infrastructure and myriad socio-economic challenges.
During the live broadcast from the Gbese Street, Ussher Town on Thursday, 24 October 2019, popular boxer, Braimah Kamoko, also known as Bukom Banku, a resident, bemoaned how the country’s leaders have abandoned the area and deprived it of development.
He did not spare the chiefs, priests and other traditional leaders who he accused of festering disunity.
“Nobody cares about Bukom, nobody cares about Accra. The leaders we have are useless. They only think about themselves, their pockets and their children. It is time for us to wake up,” he said.
He said people “just pursue politicians to get what to eat today, we don’t think about tomorrow, the young ones and their future.”
“How can one community have two chiefs and two chief priests? You cannot have two masters in a ship, we cannot have two presidents in a country. There will be war. The place is now full of land guards, we cannot even celebrate Homowo peacefully. The chiefs are not helping the community, the fetish priests are not helping the community and the fetish priestesses, too, same,” he bemoaned.
Mr Leslie Okoe Botwe, an aspiring assembly member for Kinka, Ussher Town, also highlighted the importance of education and emphasised that “we need to ensure that our kids are educated”.
For his part, one of the chief fishermen raised concerns about the challenges associated with the industry and called on the government to save their profession.
“We have issues with the fishing lights. It kills the fishes sometimes but people still use it,” he lamented.
He said the fisherfolk “struggle so much but gain little and now everyone wants fast money”. He wants the “government to delve into their issues to improve the fishing sector”.