Boti Falls

The Eastern regions’ tourism pride, the Boti Falls, the only twin water falls in Ghana is under serious threat of losing its beauty and relevance on the world’s tourism map.

The problem is not illegal felling of trees, bush fires or land litiga­tions that have been a threat for its survival.

The biggest concern for tourists and other visitors to the place has been the bad road network to the Falls.

“Very soon, there would not be any Boti Falls in Ghana because there would be no access road to the place,”Dade Mantse Kwame Teye Okletey told The Spectator in a chat.

Dade Mantse Okletey made the appeal at this year’s Eastern Region­al World Tourism Day celebration at the Boti Falls Resort last Wednesday.

“The road network to the Falls is making it unattractive for people to participate in any activity there”

The Falls has been created by the Pawnpawn River which takes its source from a mountain at the Ahenkwa-Amalakpo Forest Reserve before falling over an igneous rock outcrop at Boti Langmase, near Huhunya Forest Reserve in the Yilo Krobo Municipality in the Eastern Region.

The facility is located about 17 kilometres north-east of Koforidua, the Eastern Regional capital, about 30 minutes’ drive from Koforidua an­dan hour andhalf drive from Accra.

Due to the bad nature of the road, there have been frequent break-down of both commercial and private vehicles, school buses, researchers and tourist vehicles visiting the sight.

“The road to the Falls is so bad that visitors have refused to visit the place for fear that their vehi­cles would break down” he said.

He advised the government to turn its eye to the tourism sector, especially the Boti Falls to enable more tourists to visit the facility to generate income for the country.

Speaking on the theme for the celebration, “Tourism and Green In­vestment” the Dade Mantsesaid, his people could ‘green’ the area but the bad road network would make it unattractive for tourists to drive through it.

, Dade Mantse Okletey urged the inhabitants of the area not to leave the tourist sites in the hands of poli­ticians because governments would go and come but the sites would still be there to generate employ­ment and revenue for them.

The Eastern Regional Director of Ghana Tourism Authority (GTA), Madam Dinah AduOwusu said the environment was getting degraded and tourist sites were also being threatened, the reason this year’s tourism day celebration theme was chosen to inform the citizenry to plant more trees.

She said the 2023 National Tour­ism Day celebration was held at Ada in the Volta Region and commended the Forestry Commission for provid­ing seedlings to the Eastern region for planting to commemorate the occasion.

The Manager of the Boti Falls Resort, Mrs Irene AkuaDjandjoe also expressed concern about the road network to the Resort and appealed to the Assembly to rehabilitate it for commuters.

She said, Kingdom Ventures, man­agers of the facility had invested huge sums of money to bring the Falls to at least International stan­dard but the bad road was posing a great challenge to realising that.

A driver, Daniel Teye who ply Ko­foridua to Boti said the fare is GhȻ 15.00 but due to the nature of the road they do not get passengers.

He said a journey of about 30 minutes sometimes takes two hours depending on the number of passen­gers in the vehicle.

Daniel Teye appealed to the government to come to their aid, saying he sometimes fear for the sick and pregnant women since it is very difficult to get vehicles to convey them to access health care in the city.

 From Samuel OpareLartey, Boti Falls, Huhunya