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‘Take drastic measures to save Kabakaba Forest Reserve’

Mama Awude II, Asafo Queen of Ho-Bankoe has added her voice to the call on the Ho Municipal Assembly to adopt immediate and drastic measures to save the Kabakaba Forest Reserve on the Galenku Hill in Ho from total depletion.

“There is no point looking on unconcerned while developers put up mighty structures in the reserve before you turn round as an assembly to tell us that you will demolish the buildings,” she said in an interview in Ho yesterday.

Mama Awude’s comments come on the heels of the recent warning by the Forestry Services Division that the unending encroachment of the Kabakaba Forest Reserve will result in the submersion of the Volta regional capital in a massive deluge in 20 years.

The Volta Regional Manager of the division, Mr Michael Painstil, earlier told the Ghanaian Times that the trend will compel streams on the hill to divert their courses and flow swiftly downstream to engulf Ho on a disastrous scale.

Mama Awude observed that the rate at which private developers were invading the reserve with impunity was posing a bleak and disastrous future for the next generation.

Decades ago we looked up the hill with its green and thick forest with so much delight, but today the trees have given way to houses and even chapels.

The queen pointed out that the government had virtually rendered the traditional authorities powerless in the addressing such issues.

For that matter, she insisted that the assembly must take up the valiant role of saving the reserve from the hands of criminals.

“We know that some unscrupulous individuals in Ho rake a fortunes by fraudulently selling land in the forest to developers, so let the assembly go after them and deal with them swiftly under the law,” the Mama Awude insisted.

With the fast rate at which houses are sprawling in the Kabakaba Forest Reserve, she feared that the youth of Ho could only be come survivors and not inheritors.

“They can only struggle with the floods which will take over their homes if all the trees in the reserve finally give way,” Mama Awude warned.

FROM ALBERTO MARIO NORETTI, HO

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