Apiate explosion: Bawumia’s hurried visit ‘unprofessional, unsafe’ – Ayariga

Several people reported dead after ghastly explosion

Government pledges to build homes for displaced residents

Rescue efforts underway

Founder and leader of the All People’s Congress, Hassan Ayariga has criticized the vice president Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia and other government officials for visiting Apiate, the site of an explosion that occurred on Thursday January 20, 2022.

The Vice President Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia led a National Emergency Response team to Bogoso on Friday January 21, 2022 to get first-hand details of the accident and also to commiserate with the victims and families of the affected.

He used to the opportunity to pledge the government’s commitment to build temporary housing facilities for displaced Apiate residents.

But in Facebook post, Hassan Ayariga suggested that the life of the vice president and the government officials who accompanied him could have been put in danger if another explosion had happened.

He opined that it was unsafe for people to have visited the site bearing in mind the possibility of another explosion due to the level of chemical content involved in the earlier explosion.

“It was unprofessional and not safe for our vice president and government officials to hurriedly visit the explosion site. The security experts and other security institutions should have declared the place safe before allowing people including our Vice President to Visit the place because there could be a possibility of another explosion due to the level of chemical content involved. It wasn’t right to have allowed any body to go there,” he posted on his Facebook wall on Friday January 21, 2022.

The country was on Thursday January 20, thrown into a state of shock as viral videos emerged of an explosion in the Western regional town of Apiate where buildings had been razed, over a dozen dead and scores injured.

The police in a statement detailed that preliminary investigation had established that a mining explosive vehicle moving from Tarkwa to Chirano mines collided with a motorcycle resulting in the explosion.