The Paramount Chief of the Tumu traditional area, Kuoro Richard Babini Kanton IV has said the quality of roads in the Sissala East Municipality will be the determinant of their votes in the coming elections.
Speaking at a durbar to welcome the Vice President, the chief expressed shock that the government has not fixed the major trunk roads after almost 4 years in office.
He also stated that the people gave the government their votes for this cause.
”One major reason why my people and I gave your government a resounding victory in both the presidential and parliamentary elections in 2016 was that we had all hopes in you to fix our major trunk roads; i.e. the Wa-Tumu-Bolga highway. It is however surprising that the road has not been fixed,” he said.
The Sissala East was the only constituency in the Upper West Region where the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP) won both the presidential and parliamentary elections during the 2016 polls.
Their roads are in a deplorable state. The roads in the Sissala East Municipality make up over 45.2% of the roads in the Upper West Region.
The Paramount Chief noted that although they received assurances that the roads were awarded, it was left out in the 2020 budget presented to Parliament in 2019.
A youth group, The Sisala Youth Forum, in 2019 threatened to boycott this year’s elections in protest of the bad roads.
The group said no government has fulfilled calls for the construction of a road that will connect the Upper East Region to the Upper West Region.
A member of the group told Citi News that though they’ve had several meetings with government on the matter, their roads are still in a terrible condition.
Chief of Tumu, Kuoro Richard Babini Kanton IV stated that the people of the constituency are disappointed and will no longer pay attention to empty promises.
“Your Excellency, this time around, all we want to see is action and no longer assurances because the road is a major deciding factor in this December polls”.
The continuous rainfall has succeeded in making the roads worse and cutting some communities away from Tumu.
