Coconut trees rehabilitated from disease
About eight hundred out of three thousand hectares of land devastated by the Cape Saint Paul Wilt Coconut disease in the Western Region have so far been rehabilitated. Another 1,700 hectares of aged coconut trees have also been fertilized in the Nzema East and Jomoro districts.
The Regional Minister, A.E. Amoah, announced this at the third Western Regional 'Meet the Press' series in Takoradi Tuesday. He said coconut yields had therefore, increased from an average of 72 nuts to 120 nuts per tree per year thus, making it possible for over 2,000 coconut farmers and processors to secure jobs.
According to the Regional Minister, 33,200 nuts had so far been harvested this year and hoped the figure would go up considerably by the close of the year. He announced that over 80,000 cocoa farmers from the cocoa growing districts in the region received 127,030 bags of Asaasewura fertilizers from 2006 with 733,840 receiving the fertilizer in 2007 for their farms.
With regard to the mass spraying exercise, Amoah said 1,978 spraying gangs had so far been formed to carry out the exercise in the region. He further disclosed that an amount of one million Ghana cedis out of the approved ten million Ghana cedis had been released for the cocoa farmers' housing scheme by the government. The scheme, he said, was being piloted in the Western Region because the region accounts for 57 percent of cocoa production in the country.
The Minister said the project was being piloted at the Aowin-Suaman, Amenfi East and the Bia districts, adding that the pilot phase had been completed and that three houses had been put up at Enchi, four at Afranse and another three at Yawmatwa. He said those houses would soon be handed over to the Cocobod by the Department of Rural Housing.
Touching on the water sector, Amoah said the region's total access to potable water was about 37.2 percent, as against the national average coverage of 24.9 percent. He said "comparatively, access to potable water is not much of a problem in the urban areas as it is in the rural areas".
In addition to intervention by the Ghana Water Company Limited, he said the Community Water and Sanitation Agency is also undertaking Small Town Water and Sanitation projects with funding from the European Union, the International Development Agency and the World Bank. The Minister also spoke at length on improvements in other sectors of the economy like health, education and roads.