Youth in Agona Swedru protest over poor roads

A group calling itself Concerned Youth of Agona Swedru (COYS) have staged yet another protest against the poor state of roads in Agona Swedru.

The protesters have given the government a month’s notice to take immediate steps to fix all the deplorable roads in the town.

Dressed in red attires and red armbands, they held placards bearing various inscriptions to register their displeasure with the poor nature of roads in the town.

The protest was dubbed, “Fix Agona Swedru Roads Now”, and attracted many of the youth who had come out to register their anger at the state of the town’s roads.

Placards

Some of the inscriptions on the placards read: “We need development’, “We are tired of promises”, “Swedru is bleeding”,” Put your ego aside”,

“The youth must arise”, “If you can’t lobby for roads step aside”, “MP wake up”, “MCE wake up” and “Swedru deserves better”, among others.

The protest march which lasted for more than four hours began from the PWD office on the Swedru-Oda road through some principal streets of the town amid heavy presence police. The marchers eventually headed to the offices of the Agona West Municipal Assembly to present their petition to the Municipal Chief Executive, Mrs Justina Marigold Assan.

There was police reinforcement from Winneba and Kasoa apparently to prevent the demonstrators from doing anything untoward as was the case during the protest march by taxi drivers about a month ago.

Similar demonstration

On November 4, 2019, some angry drivers who were members of the Peace Taxi Drivers Association protested against the poor state of roads in the town. According to them, the nature of the roads was negatively affecting their business and called for the roads to be fixed.

The drivers blocked all entry points into the town and eventually brought commercial activities to a halt. They burnt lorry tyres in some parts of the town and prevented the free movement of vehicles.

Thirty-one of the demonstrators were arrested and are currently standing trial at the Swedru District Court.

Convener

Addressing the media after presenting their petition to the MCE, the Convener of the group, Hakeem Raji, said the protest was held to awaken the leaders in the municipality and the nation at large from their slumber and for them to fast-track the overall development of the town inclusive of adequate security, proper town planning and more especially good roads leading to and from the Swedru town.

He said: “We are tired of having our mothers and sisters having miscarriages due to the bad state of our roads”, adding also that “we are tired of having our poor farmers struggle to cart their farm produce to market centres due to bad roads”.

He stressed that “there will be series of lawful actions not limited to protests to press home our demand for the government to respond to our plea by the end of the year”.

MCE’s representative

The Agona West Municipal Director of the Information Services Department (ISD), Mr Michael Manford, who received the petition on behalf of the MCE, informed the demonstrators that their concerns would be forwarded to the MCE.