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Residents in areas such as Newtown, Newtown Extension and Estate in the Sunyani Municipality of the Bono Region are calling on authorities as a matter of urgency fix all faulty streetlights on the Newtown – Estate road to improve security in the communities.
According to them, those communities have been in darkness every night for the past ten years due to dysfunctional street lights and the authorities especially the assembly sits unconcern about the situation.
The situation according to some residents, is giving criminals advantage to attack them and take away their belongings such as phones, laptops, monies and other valuable items.
“About two months ago they attacked a lady returning from town around 10:00pm on the street stabbed her on the hand with a knife and took away her hand bag that contains some valuable items. Just last week, a taxi nearly knocked down a women who tried to across the road around 7:30 to 8:00pm. Why are authorities waiting for a serious desaster to happen before they fix them?”
But, speaking to Daily Searchlight’s Collins Fosu-Appiah, the Assembly Member for Akokora-Kwadwomu Electoral Area, Yaw Osei admitted that the faulty streetlights on the Newtown – Estate stretch has been a major challenge for him and his predecessor.
He revealed that, some parts are not working because the person assigned to switch it on in the night has failed to do so and he is nowhere to be found, while other side is as a result of tampering the main line by MTN telecommunication company about ten years ago.
“My predecessor complained bitterly about this to the assembly but to no avail. When I came, I personally went to the engineer at the assembly and he told me the streetlights are not working because MTN communication company allegedly tampered with the main line when laying their cables for the 4G network.”
“I couldn’t imagine how a company like MTN could do this and a whole assembly could sit unconcern for almost ten years without talking any action against the company. How can we allow a private company interest supersede the national interest, a whole community.”
Mr. Osei used the opportunity and appealed to the assembly to do the needful thing by forcing MTN to fix the streetlights in order to reduce criminal activities in the communities especially at night and also called on the police to strengthen patrols in the communities.
(The Daily Searchlight appears every day on the newsstands and for sale 24 hours every day and all week on www.ghananewsstand.com. Visit www.ghananewsstand.com for a wide variety of newspapers published in Ghana and from across the world.)
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