Chiefs and People of Sherigu demand fair share of the national cake

27-11-2011        

The 38^th Naba –Yeska festival of the chiefs and people of Sherigu in the Upper East Region has taken place with a call on government to respond to the plight of the people by ensuring that massive infrastructural development strives in the area as promised. The Traditional Chief of the area, Nana Apasinaba who made the call on behalf of his subjects expressed readiness to release parcel of lands for the construction of developmental projects including schools and the proposed Bolgatanga Teaching Hospital. He said Sherigu as a village under the Bolgatanga municipality, has for the past years suffered total neglection with regards to the sharing of the national cake though the area can boast of a population of about 15,000. Naba Apasinaba expressed graved concern on the deplorable nature of the Sherigu-Naaga roads, describing it as not only bumpy and dusty but has on it uncompleted culverts that has lasted about two to three years. According to him, there is no single kilometer of the Sherigu-Naaga road that is tarred though gravels used by contractors working on other major and access roads within the municipality are fetched from the Sherigu community. The, situation, he said calls for immediate action by the municipal assembly since the people are worried. Serious concern was also raised on the parcel of land released to the assembly to be used as a refuse dump site. The community, Naba Apasinana noted are not happy with the way the assembly is managing the site and appealed to the assembly to take drastic measures in constructing a fence wall around the site and regularly spray the area to prevent diseases. The spraying, he further, explained will go a long way in reducing the spread of malaria caused by the influx of mosquitoes. Touching on the theme for this year’s occasion:”Sustainable Livelihood and Self Independence through Education”, Naba Apasinaba disclosed that 90 percent of the entire populace of Sherigu lives in abject poverty with majority of the people engaged in peasant farming and basket weaving, whiles a few of them travel far and near to engage in irrigational farming. The poverty level he said is as a result of lack of education, stressing that most parents due to poverty are unable to cater for their wards through school leaving the children no option than to engage in low income generating activities which do not augur well for their wellbeing as future leaders.   Naba Apasinaba showed appreciation to both past and present governments for providing much needed educational infrastructure in the area and appealed to government to boost school performance and also speed up development in the area by providing more school infrastructure for students.  The occasion was used to launch the Naba –Yeska Educational Fund as a measure to assist brilliant but needy students, especially the girl child and appealed to the people to contribute their widows’ mite to ensure that the education of the girl child is pursued to the latter. An appealed for fund was later held to solicit money to support the fund.