Osudoku Youths Association Demonstrates Over Poor Sale Of Local Rice And Lack Of Development.
The Osudoku Youths Association in the Shai-Osudoku District of the Greater Accra Region on Thursday staged a massive demonstration on the streets of Asutuare, blocking all major roads leading to the township, to protest over poor sales of local rice and lack of development in the area.
The demonstrators, comprising rice farmers, youth groups and residents, said the area has been neglected for decades despite being a major hub for rice production in Ghana.
They cited poor road network, a halt in the rehabilitation of the Kpong Irrigation Dam and other developmental challenges as some of their major concerns.
Speaking to the media, a rice farmer, *Michael Noe, popularly known as Lato,* said several top government officials including the Minister for Food and Agriculture, the CEO of the National Food Buffer Stock Company, the Minister of Finance, the Greater Accra Regional Minister and the DCE for Shai-Osudoku have visited the Asutuare rice warehouses and made promises that have yielded no results.
According to him, thousands of bags of rice stored in various warehouses in the area have been left to rot for over two years due to lack of buyers.
Another rice farmer, Catherine Norvi Sogbazi, in an interview shared the frustrations and stress rice farmers in Osudoku go through and urged government to curb the importation of foreign rice into the country to boost the sale and consumption of local rice in Ghana.
P.R.O of Osudoku Youths Association, Mathew Agbedam who addressed the gathering appealed to government to resource the Buffer Stock Company to enable them purchase the local rice at the warehouses, noting that many farmers are suffering as they are unable to repay loans taken from banks to cultivate.
By:::: Jaman Dehyee Opambour.
