A final-year student and five others drowned on Tuesday (16 March) on Lake Volta in Kpando, Volta Region, officials have confirmed.
Evelyn Gadagoe of Kadjebi-Asato Senior High School was one of ten passengers travelling in a canoe on the lake when a heavy storm hit their canoe and it capsized.
Four passengers in the canoe survived the accident, but the final-year student and five others were left dead.
According to people close to Gadagoe, she was heading to her okro farm on the other side of the lake to harvest and sell some of the crops on the land so she could raise money for her education expenses.
The police, with the help of local authorities and disaster management officials, have since retrieved the bodies of the six victims and they have been deposited at the morgue in Kpando.
“We heard the information regarding the incident from some fisherfolk who happened to chance on the development,” the Volta Regional police spokesperson, Prince Dogbatse, told Joy FM.
“So they had attempted to rescue the victims. But unfortunately, that didn’t materialise [and] some persons in the canoe died,” he said.
One too many
Ten people lost their lives and 17 others were rescued on Lake Volta in May last year, the police say.
The boat, which was carrying mostly traders from Dzemeni in the Volta Region, was heading to Donkorkrom in the Afram Plains area of the Eastern Region when it capsized midway through the journey near Anivizi, a village on the banks of Lake Volta.
Overcrowding and poor safety checks have been a frequent cause of boat accidents on the lake.
Albert Kuzor
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