The Ayensu Starch Factory at Awutu Bawjiase in the Awutu Senya West Municipality of the Central Region has been left to rot away while hundreds of youth idle about unemployed in the community.
The factory which served as a source of livelihood for thousands of people in and around the Bawjiase community has been shut down since 2011 with no plans of reactivation in sight.
The situation has rendered most of the residents, especially former employees and beneficiaries of activities of the factory despondent and poor.
A visit to the factory by The Ghanaian Times revealed that the main entrance to the factory have been placed under lock and key with only two security persons on site running day and night shifts.
Commissioned in October 2001 under the Presidential Special Initiative during the Kufuor administration, the Ayensu Starch Factory stood as a beacon of rural opportunity.
Inaugurated and operationalised around 2003-2004, this agro-processing venture was intended to transform cassava into industrial-grade starch for export and domestic use. But today, the site is still.
However, the once vibrant and busy place is now dormant with weeds gradually taking over the place.
To make matters worse, a number of company buses have parked outside of the main yard of the facility under the mercy of the weather. Most of the buses have already started showing signs of rot as parts are rusting.
Accessing the main factory buildings where the machines have been installed proved futile as they have been locked and our reporters were prevented from getting closer.
Meanwhile residents of Awutu Bawjiase have appealed to the government to initiate moves to revive the defunct Ayensu Starch Factory in order to restore jobs and livelihoods in the community.
The call comes in the wake of growing concern among residents and former workers, who say the closure of the factory has left many of them unemployed as well as stagnating economic activities in the area.
A former Farm Supervisor of the factory, Sampson Antwi Bosiakoh, recounted in an interview with The Ghanaian Times how the facility once provided employment and hope for the people of Awutu Bawjiase and surrounding communities before its collapse.
He explained that when the factory started operating the factory maintained its own farm where all cassava for production was cultivated. According to him workers planted, tended, and harvested the crop, which was then processed at the factory before the land was replanted for the next cycle.
He explained that before the collapse of the factory in 2011, the factory employed a significant number of people from Bawjiase and nearby villages.
“At the time, we had 56 workers at the machinery side of the factory and 105 on the farm, and all these workers were from Bawjiase and its environs. Today most of them are still home doing nothing, while others are riding ‘okada’. Some have also become old,” he said.
He noted that the factory gave both the young and old hope and a steady source of livelihood, and called on the government to step in to revive it to create jobs for the benefit of the country at large.
Another former employee, Kweku Addo, recalled that at the beginning of operations, the factory planted its own cassava for production. However, along the line, new management decided to buy the raw materials from farmers instead.
He added that the farmlands used for cassava cultivation was leased from its owners for a couple of years, but once the factory stopped planting, the landowners took back their lands after the lease expired.
FROM STEPHANIE BIRIKORANG, AWUTU BAWJIASE
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The post Ayensu Starch Factory goes waste …residents appeal to govt for its reactivation appeared first on Ghanaian Times.
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