Mampong-Akwampem launches Ohum Festival

The dignitaries at the launch

THE CHIEFS and people of Mampong-Akwampem have launched the 2011 edition of the Ohum festival in Accra.

The festival, which is an annual event, is celebrated to remember the departed and also used as a period of rest for the people. The celebration also creates the opportunity for merrymaking and a time for reunion.

Aku Sena Dansua, Minister of Tourism who launched the festival, said apart from the festival being a forum to bring the chiefs and people together to think about the development of the traditional area, 'It also promotes or markets the area.'

She said festivals were very important tourist products which branded Ghana and put her on the international front.

The sector minister indicated that festivals of this kind also gave a better understanding of our heritage as a people.

The minister also paid tribute to Tetteh Quarshie, the first Ghanaian who brought cocoa to Ghana. She said the cocoa Tetteh Quarshie planted in Mampong-Akwampem had become the foundation of Ghana's economic trail blazer.

'The country has earned over one trillion US dollars from the production of over 38 million tons of cocoa since 1893 when the first cocoa beans were exported from Ghana,' Sena Dansua noted.

She assured the chiefs and people of Mampong-Akwampem of the preparedness of her ministry to collaborate with them in the promotion of tourism. 'This, we believe, will among others create jobs and generate income and wealth.'

Osaberimah Otu Dartey, chief of Mampong-Akwampem, in his introductory address, said that the Mampong-Akwampem township had contributed a lot of resources to the development of Ghana, however the township had not benefited in terms of infrastructural development.

'Ghana benefits a lot from our cocoa but we don't benefit from the money generated from it,' Osaberimah Otu Dartey observed.

The chief of Mampong-Akwampem thus asked the government to do something about the situation.

Osaberimah Otu Dartey also took the opportunity to caution Ghanaians against selfishness, jealousy and rumour mongering, which was penetrating the fibre of society.

He said we should expand that which we can substantiate, 'contrary to that we cannot get ahead.'

Major programmes for the week-long celebration include 'Asafo Sa' (Official opening of the celebration) street carnival, cooking competition, inter-communities fun games, state Durbar of chiefs and people and a state dance.

By Jamila Akweley Okertchiri