The Member of Parliament for Tamale North, Alhassan Suhuyini, has stated that members of the Minority caucus will do everything within their capacity to stop the reclassification of the Achimota Forest. Suhuyini, who is also the Ranking Member of Parliament’s Lands Committee, said allowing development in the forest will put the country at risk, particularly Ghanaians living in Accra.
He lamented that “declassifying almost half of the Achimota Forest was going to put all of us at risk and the president has not explained to us how the declassification was going to help us” in an interview with Caleb Kudah on the Citi Breakfast Show on Citi FM.
The Tamale North lawmaker also disclosed that the New Patriotic Party’s (NPP) government has spent more than GH¢400 million on afforestation programmes aside from the annual Green Ghana Day and so it is preposterous that President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo will issue Executive Instrument 144 to reclassify the Achimota Forest for commercial and residential developments.
“The government has spent some GH¢421 million on national afforestation programmes and that is aside from the Green Ghana Day and all of these are aimed at improving our forest cover, yet we have this same government declassifying the Achimota Forest
“Turning 361 acres of land into the concrete jungle and yet we can not point to any forest the government has created since spending all the GH¢421 million on afforestation programmes and this forest that has been created way before we were born and we are fixated at destroying it.”
Suhuyini added that “everything that we can do to save the forest, we must do and my committee’s intention was to visit the forest on Thursday to ascertain for ourselves whether they were indeed demarcating portions to the Owoo family because we cannot allow ourselves to be poisoned because the Achimota Forest saves and filters our air due to how choked Accra has become.”
By: Kabah Atawoge
