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Five communities in the Keta municipality in the Volta Region are under threat of being wiped out by sea erosion.

Kporkporgbor, Fuveme, Dzita, Havedzi and Xorvi face extinction if nothing is done to curtail the advancing tidal waves that are shrinking land and causing destruction in those communities.

The worst hit among the five is Kporkporgbor, a fishing community which has been consumed by the sea. What remains of a community that two years ago had 50 houses and two churches is one house on a small land.

Coastal communities in the Keta municipality, just like other coastal communities in the country, have been at the receiving end of tidal waves which have continually wreaked havoc on the communities, submerging buildings and trees and causing damage to property running into millions of cedis.
Kporkporgbor’s more-than-200 population has been reduced to just two — the watchman, the caretaker of the house whose owner does not expect to live in the community beyond the Easter holidays because of the constant pounding of the shore by tidal waves.

Already, the boys’ quarters of the three-bedroom house has been washed away by the sea.

Sandwiched between the sea and the Volta River, Kporkporgbor is about 25-minutes by motorised canoe from Anyanui, also in the municipality.

Communities under threat

At Fuveme, which is a peninsula, the destruction is severe. The distance from the shore to the community is less than 30 metres.

Lying in the ruins of this small coastal town once described as a vibrant fishing post are several houses reduced now to broken walls.

The fishing community of about 1,500 people used to have a coconut plantation but the sea has destroyed all the trees.