By Laudia Sawer
Tema, Aug. 13, GNA – The Tema East Constituency is one of the two constituencies in the Tema Metropolis and serves as the administrative headquarters of the area, with the seat of the metropolitan assembly located within the constituency.
Tema East, which used to cover Tema Manhean, Communities One, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine, 10, 11, and 12, was divided into two, leaving it with its current area of the densely populated Tema Manhean and Community One.
Suburbs
Tema Manhean mostly houses the Tema indigens, with other settlers such as U-Compound, which is mostly inhabited by Ewes, Dangmes, and Fantes who settled in the area due to their fishing activities.
The area’s traditional council is also there.
Community One has a number of sites, including the heavily populated Site One and Site Two, and the slum communities 3000 and 5000, which are mostly inhabited by Northerners and Dangmes who engage in informal businesses; other areas range from Site Three to Site 21, which have a number of mixed housing types and populations due to the cosmopolitan nature of the area.
Economy
As an industrial area, the Tema East Constituency can boost several businesses from small-scale enterprises to big industries such as Rana Motors, Pioneer Food Cannery, Tema Oil Refinery (TOR), Sentuo Oil Refinery, Tema Lube Oil, Unilever Ghana Limited, and Volta Aluminium Company (VALCO), among many others.
As a coastal community, it houses the Tema Canoe Beach, which has about 800 canoes and served as a landing beach for many fishermen across the country and beyond, the Fishing Harbour, a host of cold stores, and a hub for anchovies.
As a host to the main Tema Market and the popular Kwasiadwaaso, one can find all kinds of foodstuffs to buy, including fresh fish, smoked fish, tubers, vegetables, fruits, herbs, beads, cloths, wholesale and retail provision shops, and even a tailoring and dressmaking section in the market.
One cannot go hungry in Tema East, as food vending is a booming business in the area. Almost every corner, including the environs of the assembly, has food being sold on table tops and well-established eateries.
As the metro headquarters, several banks have branches in the constituency, with a rural bank located at Tema Manhean to encourage traders and companies to save with them.
Education
The Tema East Constituency has 30 public basic schools, with 18 out of them being at Tema Manhean, while some are fully from kindergarten (KG) to junior high school (JHS); others are made up of only KG, primary, and JHS, with some running the shift school system. It has more private schools.
Senior high education wise, the constituency has two public senior high schools, namely Tema Manhean Senior High Technical and Our Lady of Mercy SHS (OLAMS).
Infrastructure
It boasts sports facilities including the Tema Sports Stadium, Nii Adjei Kraku II Sports Stadium, and the Cruyff court.
Most of its schools have accommodation, even though some need some facelift with modern teaching and learning equipment, including ICT centres.
Most of the roads within the constituency, from the business area through to the Meridian enclave and central medical store areas, have been given asphalt laying.
However, residents and motorists have complained about the poor roads in the industrial area of the constituency, the link road from the Mankoadze Roundabout to Tema Newtown, and the Harbour Road, while there is only one main road linking the two areas of the constituency, community one and Manhean.
Politics and Voting Pattern
Tema East is known to be a safe seat for the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP), as the party has won six out of the eight elections held under the fourth republic from 1992 to 2020.
In the 1992 elections, the National Democratic Congress (NDC) had a straight win as the NPP did not participate in the election, seeing Mr. Larbie Nii Adjei become the Member of Parliament (MP) for the area. The lot, however, fell on Mr. Ishmael Ashitey of the NPP, who polled 33,421 votes, representing 35.80 percent of the total votes in 1996, to become the MP for the second parliament.
Mr. Ashitey further won the 2000 and 2004 elections to be a three-term MP for the area, receiving respectively 35,044 and 41,519 of the votes, leaving his contenders of the NDC in second position.
Another NPP candidate, Mr. Samuel Evans Ashong Narh, won the seat for the party with 40,444 votes in 2008.
After the split of the then Tema East Constituency in 2012, Mr. Daniel Nii Kwartei Titus Glover, the current Greater Accra Regional Minister, won the seat for the NPP over the NDC candidate Mr. Robert Kempes Ofosuware, with a vote difference of three, giving him the nickname MP3.
In the 2016 elections, Mr. Titus Glover retained the seat with 31,782 votes, representing 52.82 percent. He, however, lost to the NDC’s Mr. Isaac Ashai Odamtten, who toppled him to become the MP after polling 41,692 votes, representing 55.88 percent of the total votes cast.
Presidential wise, the NPP has won the constituency more than the NDC, with the former securing wins only for the 2020 and 2012 elections.
For the 2024 elections, the NPP and the NDC have elected, respectively, Mr. Yohane Amarh Ashitey, the current Tema Metropolitan Chief Executive, and the incumbent Mr. Isaac Ashia Odamtten, as their candidates for the parliamentary elections on December 7.
Political watchers and constituents believe this will be an interesting contest as the two candidates have all been heads of the assembly and will thus be compared on their successes and failures as chief executive officers for the industrial cum harbour city.
GNA