A twenty-nine (29) year old and first-timer Assembly Member (AM) aspirant for the Agorgbe Electoral Area in the South Tongu District of the Volta Region, Mr. Clifford Quarcoo Torgbenu has stated that he would provide a selfless, servant and result-oriented leadership if given the nod to become the AM of the Agorgbe Electoral Area.
He made the comments in a bid to canvass for votes. But he was quick to add that the only way to enhance the infrastructural and economic development of the area was for him to ascend to a leadership position at the local government level.
Mr. Torgbenu spoke to our news team during a visit to assess the level of infrastructural development in the Agorgbe Electoral Area.
The Tefle Agorgbe Electoral Area is located near Kpotame, off the Accra-Aflao international highway. The Area has about eleven (11) communities with a population of about nine hundred (900) inhabitants. The communities include Ketisinu, Dasakoe, Anorti, Feyito, Doglokpo, Horkpo, Hoggarkofe and Yesayakofe.
Some economic activities the people engage in include growing crops like cassava and maize.
Others are rearing animals such as cattle, sheep, and goats.
The rest are charcoal burning, petty trading, and kente weaving by the youth.
Though there is an electricity supply from the national grid to the electoral area, access to potable water remains a nightmare for the people. The old pipeline system has become a white elephant because the pipelines are too small to contain the water quantity that must flow into these communities. Apart from that, the inflow of water from the Agordome Water Treatment Plant has also become inadequate in recent years, worsening the plight of the people.
Residents, therefore, resort to a nearby Dodovu stream to fetch water for their domestic chores, excluding drinking, which has exposed them to threats of waterborne diseases, particularly when calls have gone in recent times against the use of the polluted Lake Volta following the spillage of the Akosombo and Kpong dams.
The Agorgbe D.A. Basic School battles infrastructural challenges. A six-unit GETFund classroom block, started in 2016 by the erstwhile National Democratic Congress (NDC) government, has since been stalled for the past eight (8) years due to a lack of funds.
The situation has compelled all the Junior High School (JHS) pupils to use a dilapidated mud structure for their studies. The stalled project continues to deteriorate as cracks have started forming in parts of the building.
The road network linking all communities in the Electoral Area is deplorable. It had to take the ingenuity of a citizen and philanthropist of the area as well as the Public Relations Officer (PRO) of the Ghana Bar Association (GBA), Mr. Saviour Kudze to shape the road from Kpotame to Tefle Agorgbe with some two hundred (200) trips of laterite in addition to kick-starting a gutter project for the township, all valued at more than Three Hundred Thousand (Ghc300,000) Ghana Cedis.
According to Mr. Torgbenu, Lawyer Kudze also provided some five hundred (500) bags of sachet water as well as a lot of sanitary pads for the school girls whose distribution he supervised in consultation with the stakeholders of the community during the recent Akosombo dam spillage disaster that afflicted several households in the area.
The Assembly Member aspirant disclosed that he also led the spot-improvement project and other support activities in his quest to promote community development.
He told our news team that he hoped to organize the first speech and prize-giving day to motivate the pupils to learn hard. He explained that apart from awarding the overall best pupils in each class with prizes, each pupil from the Kindergarten (KG) to the JHS3 levels would be given prizes according to the various subjects. This action plan, he believed, would be his quota to promote quality education in the area.
He lauded Lawyer Kudze for what he described as his statesmanship and urged other citizens of the area to emulate his shining example.
The Assembly Member aspirant also praised the Chief of the community, Togbe Adomtsri VI, for the recent donation of some educational materials to the pupils and teachers of the school. According to him, all these efforts have become an eye-opener for many people who want to provide selfless leadership for the electoral area.
An Opinion Leader, Zikpuitor Noah Kofi Kudze, and a Unit Committee Member aspirant of the area, Mr. Vincent Mordzifa, commended the philanthropist for the gesture and urged the citizens of the area to support all efforts to develop the Electoral Area into a modern community.
They also called on the government to urgently address some other pressing needs of the people of the Electoral Area. These include the acute water problem, the continuation and completion of the stalled GETFund school project, and supporting the philanthropist to complete the road network linking the various communities in the electoral area.
According to them, the mud structure currently being used by the JHS pupils of the school is nothing to write home about and a demotivation for both staff and pupils.
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