Kantamanto market women threaten mass suicide if...

Some market women whose wares were consumed by Sunday’s fire at Kantamanto are threatening to commit suicide on a mass scale if city authorities evict them from the square, or the government fails to assist them.

The Mayor of Accra, Dr Alfred Vanderpuije, has told XYZ News in an interview that all the affected market women will be temporarily relocated to the Pedestrian Shopping Mall or Odawna Market at the Kwame Nkrumah Circle while the razed Kantamanto market is reconstructed into a modern facility.

However, some of the market women are not happy about the move to relocate them.

One of the affected women warned that if the city authorities dare make any move to evict them from the market, then the government will witness what she described as unprecedented mass suicide.

She told XYZ News reporter Ibrahim Alhassan amidst uncontrollable wailing that: “We will drink poison if the government fails to help us”.

Another victim, a second hand clothing seller who said she lost about Ghc 4,800 worth of merchandise told XYZ News that: “Many people will die if no help arrives”.

Most of the market women echoed similar sentiments when they spoke to XYZ News on Monday May 6, 2013, at the razed market square and warned that any attempts to politicise the disaster will worsen the plight of thousands of their fellow traders.

Vice President Paa Kwesi Amissah-Arthur, who visited the fire-gutted market on Sunday to commiserate with the market women on behalf of the government, has instructed the finance minister to direct financial institutions to extend assistance to the fire victims.

The fire started around 0430GMT on Sunday, May 5, 2013 and decimated a huge chunk of the market.

The inferno, according to reports, blazed for more than eight hours despite the presence of fire officers who were at hand to subdue it.

The Kantamanto fire disaster followed a similar fire disaster at a mega slum called Sodom and Gomorrah, also in the heart of the capital city just two days earlier.