FLOOD VICTIMS IN WEST MAMPRUSI UPSET

Farmers in the West Mamprusi District of the Northern Region who were badly hit by the water spillage from the Bagre Dam of Burkina Faso have criticized government for not putting in place hasty measures to save them from experiencing such annual flood devastations, which destroy their crops, animals, houses and sometimes kill some of them.

According to the traumatized farmers, they were no longer interested in going into large scale or commercial farming in the next farming seasons, since government had not been able to find solution to the problem, apart from asking them to move to the higher grounds.

The farmers made the complaints when the Member of Parliament (MP) for Walewale, Mr. Alidu Iddrisu Zakari visited some of the affected communities to sympathize with them.

So far, over 1,800 households including women and children have been displaced by this year’s flood in the Walewale Constituency alone whiles an unimaginable acres of farm lands, houses and other valuable properties have been washed away by the floods.

At the moment, majority of the affected persons are putting up with friends and other relatives in the nearby but unaffected communities.

The people told the MP that school children could not go to school in some of the affected communities because of the severity of the floods and most of the school buildings had also been affected.

The farmers asserted that even though the West Mamprusi District Assembly, NADMO and the MP had made efforts to relief them, they would be fulfilled if government find solution to the problem.

In an interview with savannahnews after the visit, the Walewale MP, Alidu Iddrisu Zakari expressed serious worry about the situation in which the poor farmers had found themselves.

According to the MP, most of the farmers in trying to meet the food demand of the nation opted for banks and other loans to expand their farming businesses but had lost everything to the floods.

Hon Alidu anticipated that with the level of damage caused by the flood most of the farmers in the area would not be able to feed their families until the next farming season because poverty he said was also high among the households.

Saying, “There is no amount of relief items that can satisfy the people through out the year hence the need for government to speed up its efforts of curtailing containing the floods”.