Kumasi Rattary Park In Top Shape – Mayor

MEDIA REPORTS  that the a state-of-the-art recreational facility, called ‘The Rattray Park’, in the Ashanti Region has fallen apart due to lack of maintenance, has angered the Chief Executive of the Kumasi Metropolitan Assembly (KMA), Osei Assibey Antwi.

The KMA Boss says the reports are completely false and were deliberately put out by Felix Kwakye Ofosu,   former deputy Communications Minister in the erstwhile John Mahama led-government.

“This Felix Kwakye Ofosu published on his Facebook wall, an old picture of the Rattray Park, which had then suffered some infrastructural damages after a rainstorm….He also lied that the pictures were the current state of the Rattray Park in Kumasi, which are all palpable lies”, an angry sounding Osei Assibey Antwi told Nhyira FM in Kumasi.

He said the former Deputy Minister intentionally put out the “misinformation just to tarnish the image of the KMA and the people of Kumasi for political reasons”.

“Felix Kwakye Ofosu should engage in positive politics and stop the NDCs usual propaganda and politics of lies because it will not help him in any way”, he said.

The Kumasi Mayor explained that the Rattray Park suffered some minor damages during a rainstorm last year, but the problem has been completely fixed.

According to the Kumasi Mayor, the Rattray Park in currently in a better condition as compared to when the New Patriotic Party (NPP) government took office in January 2017.

Osei Assibey Antwi disclosed that a private investor is constructing a swimming pool and other amenities just to upgrade the standard of the recreational facility.

According to the KMA Boss, the Assembly wanted the facility to be managed properly so it recently engaged a private investor to manage the place.

The Rattray Park in KUmasi is aimed at giving residents a one-stop recreation facility and also promote a healthy lifestyle. It is a 42,000 square-meter Park with an acoustic dancing fountain and is reputed as the first of its kind in the country.

It has  a six square-meter multimedia controlled fountain, children’s playground, a golf cart, wi-fi internet connectivity, an open robust gym and a cafeteria among others.

The park is an initiative of the Kumasi Metropolitan Assembly (KMA) and is named after Captain Robert Rattray, a Scottish who was the Assistant Colonial Secretary in the Gold Coast and clerk to the Legislative Assembly of Accra in 1919.

Captain Robert Rattray was a Special Commissioner and the colonial government anthropologist in Ashanti in 1920, who did a lot of research work on the Ashanti Kingdom and the people of the Gold Coast in a bid to help the government understand the people.

He was also the first man to fly an aircraft (glider) to West Africa, and crash-landed at the site where the ultramodern recreational centre stands, even as it falls apart.