THE Police at Mpakadan, a fishing community near Akosombo in the Asuogyaman District in the Eastern Region, have denied a newspaper report that they and a fishing company were terrorising citizens of the town.
According to the Akosombo District Police Commander, Assistant Superintendent of Police (ASP) Issah Mohammed Cantona, no fishing company in the area and the police had terrorised the citizens of the town.
He, therefore, described the report as “blatantly false; calculated to cause confusion in the town”.
Under the headline: “Guns blaze at Mpakadan as fishing company and police terrorise citizens”, a report which appeared in the Monday, June 8 edition of The Insight, stated that Tropo Farms Limited, a fishing company which produces tilapia on the Volta River, had teamed up with the police to terrorise the citizens, most of whom were fisherman plying their trade on the river.
ASP Cantona said the only cases in the town were the arrest of a fisherman who was caught stealing from one of the fishing cages belonging to Tropo Farms and a motor accident on Sunday leading to the death of one person, and added that the cases were being handled by his outfit.
When contacted on the issue, the Secretary of the Inland Canoe Fishermen Association in the town, Mr Francis Avegbedor corroborated ASP Cantona’s story.
He said before Tropo Farms started operations in 2005, each of the fishermen was given GH¢300 as compensation after which the company was to prepare a different landing site for them along the river.
Mr Avegbedor stated that under an agreement, the local fishermen were not to fish within a 100-acre radius of the area that the Volta River Authority had allocated to the company.
According to him, although most of the fishermen took the money, others rejected it and said there were instances where some of the fishermen were caught stealing fish from the cages of Tropo Farms.
Throwing more light on the issue, the Site Manager of Tropo Farms, Mr Richard Bryant, said the company acquired the 100-acre water body through a concession granted by the VRA after which the company gave GH¢300 to each of the local fishermen and most of them accepted the money.
He wondered why the fishermen who were also fishing in the river and had been allowed to use a landing bay near the cages of Tropo Farms till the company constructed a new one for them, should rather steal fish from the cages.
Mr Bryant said although the company’s security men had been armed to protect its property, they had not fired any shot at anybody.
“We have not fired at anybody; we only arrest the thieves and hand them over to the police”, he stated.
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