About one thousand settler farmers and their dependents in the Veta traditional area in the Volta Region are living in fear following persistent attacks and death threats on them by a group of residents. The assailants who often carry machetes lay ambush and terrorize the farmers on their rice farms. Joy News has learnt the group, named as Israel and Co, also targets homes and destroys property. The settlers have been farming on a parcel of land acquired by government for the Afife Irrigation Project under the Irrigation Development Authority. One of the farmers, Benjamin Kpodo, told Joy News some of his colleagues have been compelled to send their families away from the area. He said the indigenes consider them strangers. “They say we should go back to our areas where we come from,” he lamented. Another farmer, Daniel Gyan, said only 30 percent of the rice farms have so far been seeded. He appealed to government to intervene. A farm manager at the Veta Irrigation Project, Samuel Boakye, said a formal complaint has been made to the irrigation authorities. Meanwhile police there are said to have deployed officers to the area to protect the settler farmers from the persistent attacks. Source: Joy News/Myjoyonline.com/Ghana