Police stir anger of Tema residents in ejection exercise

Occupants of a building belonging to the Ghana Publishing Corporation are angry with police from the Tema Community 1 District Command for storming their homes on Sunday, February 9, 2014 to eject them from the building.

Mostly former employees of the Corporation and their relatives, the occupants claim a tussle over who owns the building is still in court and the policemen acted not in the name of the court as they claimed.

The occupants explained that the former employees of the building, some of whom are now deceased, had paid entitlements of the houses to the Tema Development Corporation (TDC) over the years.

One of the occupants, Frank Ofori, who claims to have resided in the building for 45 years, said though there was a court ruling on October 29, 2009 for them to evacuate the building, an appeal filed against the ruling handed them a stay of execution with the final determination of the matter yet to be reached.

He observed that six unidentified police officers and some men, who claimed to be bailiffs, stormed their rooms at about 5:00am on Sunday to eject them.

The Tema Regional Police Command has, however, dismissed the accusation, claiming it received a court order to provide security.

“In this particular case, Community One District Commander received a court order [and] detailed some men together with personnel from our SWAT Unit,” Olivier Turkson, Public Relations Officer of the Tema Regional Police told TV3.

“Basically, when we go, our duties are to protect the court officials who are there to execute the order and to offer security to even the occupants and people around,” she added.