Appiatse residents to be relocated after deadly explosion

The Prestea-Huni Valley Municipal Assembly is racing against time to relocate residents affected by the Appiatse explosion to a new place.

Officials from the Works Department, Physical Planning and mining company Future Global Resources (FGR) are currently preparing a new location and are hopeful that works will be completed on Tuesday, January 25.

Over 350 residents affected by the Appiatse explosion are still at the St. Michael’s Parish Church at Bogoso where they are temporarily sheltering. Another group was also sent to the Bogoso Golden Hotel, old site.

Luckily, the Assembly has been able to secure a place to relocate the affected residents.

According to the Assembly, it has settled on the Dumasi resettlement site which was presented to it by mining company FGR.

Officials from the Assembly’s Work Department, Physical Planning Department and from the mining company have for the past two days been busily preparing the site for the relocation.

“We are putting up camps from them. These white ones were given to us by Red Cross and we have the bigger ones which are the green ones also from Goldfields. But this location was given to us by Future Global Resources. The white ones are for households consisting of the wife, the husband and children. The bigger ones can take 10 people at a time and comes with a bed…But the issue is that the big ones sit on the bare ground. So what we are doing is to cast concrete of about 3 inches so that when it rains, they will be safe. For the small ones, they come with a base and also waterproof,” Prestea-Huni Valley Municipal Works Engineer George Kojo Scott revealed

George Kojo Scott mentioned that the site already has some existing structures which will be converted for various purposes to meet the needs of the affected residents.

He said a conference room will be created for visitors who come to see the victims.

According to him, the site is close to Appiatse and will enable residents who are farmers to start farming as soon as possible.

“We are also putting up a place of convenience. There is also a borehole here both manual and mechanized so the water situation is quite good. We have improved security and have fixed street lights to light up the place. In all these, we will have a committee made up of people here to take charge of happenings here, to avoid any chaotic situation.”

Currently, he indicated that over 500 people are expected to be relocated to the Dumasi Resettlement Site.

Source: 3news