There was a huge sigh of relief at the end of over four hours of frank exchanges between representatives of Fishermen, officials of the Kete Krachi Timber Recovery Limited, (KKTR) and the Kwahu South District Security Council (DISEC) at Mpraeso when the various parties agreed to coexist, live in harmony and work together for their mutual benefits.
Held at the initiative of the Kwahu South DISEC under the chairmanship of the District Chief Executive, Emmanuel Attah Ofori, the stakeholder consultation provided the opportunity for the Fisherman to register the cause of their agitation against the operations of Kete Krachi Timber Recovery on the Lake Volta which also served as the source of their fishing occupation.
After thorough exchanges between the groups, which included the National and Local leadership of the National Inland Canoe Fishermen Council, it emerged that a number of the issues agitating the minds of the Bamboo Fishermen were misconceptions and not as they had assumed, including the allegation that the trees in the Volta Lake were being uprooted whereas they were being cut and leaving the root/ stem.
It also emerged from the discussion that the SHARC equipment used for the cutting of the trees in the Lake is constructed such that it did not have the capacity to cut smaller trees and uses a special Panolin fuel imported from Canada and the USA which is environmentally friendly and does not pollute the River.
A day after the meeting, members of the DISEC, heads of the Fishermen and officials from the Assembly led by the District Chief Executive visited the current operations cite of KKTR on the Lake to have a firsthand view of how the dead wood were harvested which further threw more light on how safe and environmentally friendly the KKTR operations were.
The DCE, Attah Ofori said with what had been discussed and seen with the eye, there was no longer any reason for any Fisherman to harbor any idea of disrupting or preventing the KKTR from carrying out its legitimate activities which are to the benefit of both the local fishing communities and the nation.
The Odikro of Nketepa, Nana Kwabena Obeng said the meeting has been most fruitful as it had removed a number of the perceptions on the impact of KKTR on fishing from their minds while Mr. Gideon Prempeh, the Kwahu South District Chief Fisherman called for more of such interactions for a healthy relationship between the Fishers and the KKTR.
Technical Adviser at the One-District-One-Factory, (1D1F), Secretariat, Kwame Antwi- Adjei, said the KKTR was a unique company with enormous contribution to the state which was inaugurated in November 2018, by President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo as 1D1F and must be encouraged by all to attain its lofty objectives.
For his part, the President of the National Inland Canoe Fishermen Council, Jacob Tetteh Ageke, said in order that KKTR operated within the terms of agreement between the two entities, a representative of the NICFC has been placed permanently on the boat (SHARC) to ensure strict compliance by the KKTR.
A Communication Specialist, Kweku Sersah-Johnson, and Operations Manager of KKTR, Ali Marnah, both expressed the gratitude of the company to the DISEC, especially the District Chief Executive and the NICFC for bringing an end what they described as unnecessary rivalry and hostility between a section of the fishermen and the company.
The Keta Krachi Timber Recovery Limited is a wholly owned Ghanaian subsidiary of Dedeso Holdongs with the concession from the State to harvest tree stumps from the Volta Lake to bring safety to lake transport and fishing.
Other representative as the meeting included the District Policy Commander Richard Horbuvo, Chief Superintendent, Prosper Atisu, the District Immigration, Commander, the District Fire Commander, Anthony Mayebi, Moses Nutifafa, a leading Fisherman, Desmond Obese Nkansah, Assistant Director at the KSDA, Robert Azuma, Secretary of NICFC and Messrs Isaac Sebi, Simon Akpalu and Paul Okain Fishermen.
