Minister tours Accra Railway Yard

The Minister for Ports, Harbours and Railways (PHR), Professor Christopher Ameyaw-Akumfi on Thursday told the ejected traders along the railway lines that government was putting measures in place to resettle them as soon as possible to end their frustration.

"In principle it is not right for the traders to squat on the lines and, therefore, the need to move them excepts that there is the need for time to get them settled", he said, during a familiarization visit.

He said the Ministry would get in touch with the Accra Metropolitan Assembly as soon as possible to see how best they could be settled early to end the confrontation with Railway officials.

The Minister was also to dialogue with officials of the company to see how best the rail transport system could be revamped to facilitate the movement of goods and people throughout the country.

Professor Ameyaw-Akumfi said, it was an act of indiscipline to sell along the rail lines and that the ejection exercise by the company was in the right direction and called on the squatters to keep off the premises to ensure sanity in the rail system.

He said the Chinese and Indians were interested in investing in the railway network and their presence would make it difficult for any investor to pump money into the system.

He said government was putting modalities in place to start the revamping of the Accra-Tema, Accra-Nsawam and Accra- Kumasi rail lines to ease traffic and also to cart goods from the interior to the cities.

He said that plans were far advanced to extend the system to Northern Ghana saying, "something positive would actually be done before 2004 about the rail system".

Mr Divine K. Ablerdu, Area Manager of the Company, said the presence of the squatters had been a worry to the company and urged the Minister to help to solve the problem.

He said goods seized from the squatters would be well kept until the rightful owners were identified and denied allegations that the company had burnt some of them.

The Minister interacted with some of the ejected traders and advised them to leave the place for development work to be done.