Demo Hits DCE

KWAME Adarkwah�s continuous stay in office as the District Chief Executive of Bosome Freho in the Ashanti region is being seriously threatened as people in the area are calling for his head. Members of the district have threatened to kick out the beleaguered District Chief Executive (DCE) for his lacklustre leadership skills so far. The people in the district have levelled several allegations against Hon. Adarkwah, including financial malfeasance, intimidation and threats, among others, and have urged President Mills to remove him from office immediately. The people, from various communities in the district, displayed their disenchantment against their DCE by staging a mammoth demonstration which has never been witnessed in the area, at Asiwa, the district capital, on Friday. Singing war songs, the demonstrators, wearing red shirts to symbolize their fury, marched from one end of Asiwa to the other, threatening to make life unbearable for Adarkwah if he remained in office as DCE. The massive demonstration lasted for many hours and it caused severe vehicular traffic as the demonstrators, including women, almost filled every part of the main street of the town. Addressing a section of the media after the peaceful demonstration, John Oteng, Unit Committee Chairman of the area and one of the leaders of the demonstration, said the DCE was taking them for granted. He levelled six strong allegations against Hon. Adarkwah, prominent among them being that the DCE did not respect the chiefs and opinion leaders in the area and even engaged the services of hoodlums to beat chiefs in the area that presented petitions against him to the regional minister at the Ashanti Regional Coordinating Council on April 19, 2011. The chiefs suffered the ordeal because they resisted the DCE�s attempt to make huge profit out of a whopping GH�160,000 given by the government for the construction of the district education directorate. The old education office, which boasts of eight rooms, was too small and could not accommodate everyone so the money given to the district was for the purchase of a bigger house but instead the DCE tried to buy a house which has five rooms. This action by the DCE, according to the chiefs, could prove disastrous for the community so they tried to intervene but Hon. Adarkwah responded violently by hiring machomen to beat them up. Mr. Oteng also lambasted the DCE for seizing logs of timber worth about GH�20,000, which he single-handedly sold and later declared a meagre GH�4,300 to the assembly as revenue raised from the sale of the logs. The people also lambasted the DCE for keeping the excavator meant for the construction of the roads in the area, as his personal property. They noted, �Since the acquisition of that excavator, it has never been used for any road maintenance in the district.� The demonstrators called on government to immediately launch a full-scale investigation into Hon. Adarkwah�s dealings with Zoomlion, how he expended monies at the assembly, among other actions within the last two years before, before dismissing him.