Employees work two days in a week due to lack of electricity, water

Government employees that have been posted to the Wa East District work only two days of the week because the district has no electricity and water.

The Wa East Dostrict has no access to electricity, potable water and communication facilities to make the district functional to bring governance to the doorsteps of the people.

Even a small water project at Funsi, the district capital has come to a halt because of the lack of electricity, whilst most workers posted to the town scramble for water from the few boreholes with the inhabitants.

The about 5,000 inhabitants depend on only five boreholes for their drinking water and other domestic use.

A visit to Funsi by the Ghana News Agency on Thursday showed that most workers only work on Tuesdays and Wednesdays in the offices and rush back to Wa for the rest of the week.

Official work cannot be done at Funsi because computers and other office equipment cannot be powered and workers have to carry out their official duties at Wa before returning to Funsi.

The Wa East District was created in 2004 and since then no community in the district had been connected with electricity denying the youth of any cottage industry to raise income.

Communication companies were skeptical about establishing networks in the district because they have to install generators for network services, which would cost them much more money to run.

Speaking to the Ghana News Agency in an interview, Mr Albert Bawa Sulley, Vice Chairman of the Sissala Union, said when the area was part of the Wa Municipality, it never benefited from any development projects and social facilities.

He said when the district was created the people in the area thought they had “escaped from the paws of the lion, but little did they know that they were rather going to be swallowed by the Python”.

Mr Sulley said "Our district is an orphan district and the orphan is being strangulated to death. Our district can best be described as a state within the Ghana State.”

"Imagine, for the past four years no effort had been made to bring electricity and communication facilities to the area", he said.

Mr Sulley said people in the district would have wished that electricity was tapped from Sakai in the Sissala East District to Funsi to reduce cost.

He said Sakai is nearer to Funsi than Daffiama and urged the government to consider connecting the district capital with electricity from the Sakai line.

The Sissala Union Vice Chairman also appealed to communication companies to consider extending their services to cover the district to facilitate the free flow of information among the people and the outside world.

He called on the government to commit more resources to the district to catch up with the older districts to stem the uneven development pattern of the country.

Mr Sulley said: "We must learn from our past mistakes and avoid repeating them", he said, pointing out that the disparity in development between the north and south is a case in point.

He appealed to the government to put bailey bridges on Kulun, Ambalara and Jullu Rivers to open up the area to people in other parts of the country.