Slum Dwellers And Hawkers Are Criminals’ Says AMA

Press Release

The youth wing of the CPP is disgusted with comments of AMA
officials who were on the skky tv and Prime radio last week Friday (February
3rd, 2012) where they sought to denigrate persons who had turned up in their
numbers at the massive demonstration against the Mayor as dirty and unkempt
criminals. We take deep exception to these discriminatory and degrading
comments and condemn in no uncertain terms these discriminatory and classist
sentiments.
The AMA has now made it very clear that, anybody, who is
unfortunate enough to be poor and therefore cannot afford to flaunt squeaky clean
and pristine clothing and other adornment, is a criminal. Time and again, the
AMA has failed in their thinking to properly identify and look at the root
causes of the problems of poverty, homelessness and street hawking. In their
paucity of pragmatic ideas to solving problems, they have resorted to brute
force, devoid of any human face.
The AMA sees the answer to the issue of homeless and hawking is
waging an unrelenting war and continual infliction of brutality on the poor in
the Accra metropolis. In doing this, the AMA has sought to declare all these
poor slum dwellers social misfits and criminals who have no place in this
metropolis and thus deserve to be thrown into the streets regardless of the
consequences. The AMA is acting like the proverbial sheep, which claims to be
desecrating the streets by defecating haphazardly everywhere; forgetting that
his anus is being soiled by the remains of his own excrement.
In their attempt to rid the city of the so-called criminals, the
AMA has resorted to an unbridled violation of Chapter Five, Article 17,
sub-section 2 and 3 of the constitution of Ghana. Apart from this, it is also
an affront to the A.U and UN charter. The Action of the AMA, being spearheaded
by the Mayor, Dr. Alfred Oko vanderpuye, brings home clearly the bourgeoisie
thinking of some Public Office holders, who believe that poverty is a crime. We
are totally disgusted!
Based on the a fore-gone premises, the CPP Youth Wing, finds it
imperative that, if the NDC administration and the President, Atta Mills, are
to be considered worthy of their office, then they must act quickly to rid the
AMA of Vanderpuje, whose inconsiderate and insensitive style of leadership has not
only brought untold
hardships to the already suffering poor, but also seeks to propagate
bourgeoisie sentiments against the poor; with total disregard for the
provisions of the constitution of the Ghana.

It should horrify every right minded person why AMA cannot
appreciate the following facts;

1) It is not the fault of the people that they are where they
are. They are simply victims of circumstances they have not created!
2) Some of them have been given genuine permits by the same AMA
to erect their habitats there. What happens to such decadent officers?
3) AMA should also bear in mind that what they call slums are
the life savings of the people. In order words, some of these people have
worked their whole life to erect these structures they carelessly and
mercilessly demolished within a matter of few days
4) If better and honourable alternatives are made readily
available, what will then be the incentives for them to still be at where they
are now?
With the best faith in the world, all these issues when put
together make up a very sad story!
The CPP youth wing wish to state without reverse that AMA should
be reminded, that, if the residents of odawna/ECOMOG and other victims of the on-going
demolition exercise cannot take the laws into their own hands by their actions
and inactions, in the same vain AMA cannot also take the laws into their hands
by over stepping the bounds of their authority.
In our onwards match towards widening the frontiers of freedom
and development, let us resolve ourselves eternally, whether you move left nor
right, the only way forward is the way forward.

Ernesto Yeboah
Deputy National Youth
Organiser, CPP.