To make travels across the St. Paul River in the Clay Ashland Township safer, farmers on the West Bank of the river are seeking for at least a modernized water transport boat or ferry.
With the provision of a modern boat or ferry, they would feel safe crossing the river.
The farmers and other commuters are of the urge that for them to have easy access crossing the river with an engine ride boat or a well-prepared ferry, would allow them conduct business and other activities risk-free in Louisiana Township and other nearby communities.
They spoke of fear over the ‘troubling times’ when the water overflows its banks during raining season. Some of the locals recorded previous accounts of tragedies where the wooden old canoes capsized, thus drowning vulnerable travelers without lives saving guards.
Farm produce are transported from Clay Ashland in District #17 to the general market in Louisiana, located in District #1 in Montserrado County, via the
only shortest trade route.
A farmer, Jonathan K. Sackie of Clay Ashland, said in spite of the challenges facing them, they remain the fulcrum of livelihood to many others in Monrovia and its environs.
The use of canoes to cross the St. Paul River from either side of the divide has been in practice for decades long for the locals living in towns and villages along the river in rural Montserrado County. The remote areas also lack basic social services that induce school-going children to leave the township of Clay Ashland and attend school in Louisiana.
This exciting activity of a regular transport is life-threatening especially to women and children who get across the river on a daily basis to do business.
“We need a commuter boat or ferry because our children can cross the river every day to go to school. This is our fear as parents. Crossing in canoes has always being our way of life and this thing started long ago. But most of the times when the canoe overturns; it is the women and children that suffer often to death, because lots of them don’t know how to swim.”
Farmers in this part of the county are growing vegetables and food crops, including sugarcane.
Others produced charcoal that is used in approximately 90 percent of household kitchens in Monrovia. The charcoal business has developed the lives of many Liberian families.
Ezeziel Wrotoe, a businessman who trades sugarcane from Louisiana to Waterside and West Point, outside Monrovia, regularly transacts with farmers from Clay Ashland when he arrives in Louisiana.
Wrotoe is one of those advocating for the government to deploy a commuters’ boat to improve trade and farmers’ safety while crossing the St. Paul River.
Madam Gayflor puts the risk of crossing the river at an alarming peak and uncontrollable, because they do not have any option besides using the canoes.
She too welcomes a modern boat for commercial purpose from the government to transport commuters freely across the river.
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