Monday, July 20, 2009

ENCROACHERS INVADE KWADASO PARK (PAGE 11, GRAPHIC SPORTS JULY 17)

A Kumasi-based businesswoman, Madam Sakaa and Sons, has extended her business operations to the Kwadaso Estate community sports park, making it difficult for citizens in the area to undertake sporting activities.
Apart from blocking the entrance to the pitch with assorted metal containers, making it difficult for vehicles to either convey sportsmen and women to the pitch or evacuate injured sports men and women from the park in case of emergency, the businesswoman has also turned the entrance into a sales point for culverts and cement blocks.
The entrance also serves as a dumping ground for sand, stones and gravels used for the moulding of the culverts and cement blocks, compounding the problems of the people in the community.
When Graphic Sports paid a familiarisation visit to the Kwadaso Estate Community Park last Sunday, members of the Kwadaso Estate Keep Fit Club who had arrived for morning training found it difficult to even park their vehicles due to the invasion.
Speaking to this paper, the Chairman of the club, Mr Abeiku White, expressed concern about the inability of the Ashanti Regional Sports Council and the Kumasi Metropolitan Assembly to call the businesswoman who had invaded the Kwadaso Estate Community park to order by preventing her from conducting her business operations at the main entrance of the park.
He said apart from the members of the Keep Fit Club who used the pitch to exercise in order to stay healthy to enable them to increase productivity, the various educational institutions in the Kwadaso Estate also use the park regularly.
He mentioned Jesus The king, Holy Lutheran Trinity and Kwadaso Estate Community basic schools, as well as Prince of Peace Senior High School, as some of the educational institutions in the locality which regularly use the Kwadaso Estate Community park for their sporting activities.
Mr White said the park also serves as training ground for third division soccer clubs such as Great Africans and Yegoala to promote the development of soccer for the youth in the community, “but the selfish interest of this businesswoman is seriously undermining the effective and efficient development of sporting programmes here”.
He, therefore, pleaded with both the Regional Sports Council and the KMA to intervene urgently to prevent the encroachers from that act.

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