Residents and visitors to Accra’s newest modern shopping centre – the Achimota Retail Centre – are first struck by the sheer serenity of the ambiance – how the centre opens up to the visitor right from the car park and embraces him throughout the stay.

The developers of the Centre were obviously conscious of the attendant demands of hospitality, convenience and accessibility.

But the Centre’s management declared over the weekend, that in its business of making basic necessities of life available to people in the most convenient environment, one uncompromising concern is the comfort, safety and security of customers and visitors to the centre.

The 60 million dollar investment in the centre includes the establishment of a state-of-the-art security apparatus which assists management to keep an eye on every activity on the premises and helps to prevent and control untoward conduct by trouble makers.

The Manager of the Centre, Mr. George Boakye Sarpong told Journalists at a briefing that in order to ensure that shoppers and visitors are safe and secured, Achimota Shopping Centre operates a two-tier security regime involving a top-of-the-range electronic surveillance and monitoring system and a well trained and highly disciplined physical security force on the ground.

‘Our electronic surveillance system is so efficient, robust and constantly in operation and it is effective in assisting our manual ground security team to identify and disengage trouble makers in good time’, said Mr. Sarpong.

The Manager said the Centre also enjoys considerable Police presence as it works closely with the Mile 7 Police Command which, on a daily basis, assigns a team of officers, including plain clothes personnel to the Centre.

Mr Sarpong disclosed that the Management of the Centre has also reached an understanding with the Visibility Unit of the Ghana Police Service for the latter to beef up fixed police presence at the Centre.

‘So you can now appreciate what we mean when we say that the personal safety and security of our customers, guests and visitors is paramount to us. But while we are doing everything to ensure your comfort and safety, we would want our visitors to help us by first, not exposing or keeping valuables in their vehicles and secondly by freely reporting suspicious conduct to security personnel on ground,’ Mr. Sarpong pleaded.

Accra’s latest modern shopping centre, owned by Delico Achimota Limited, is located at Dome near the St. Johns Grammar School in north-eastern Accra within the Ga East Municipality and is surrounded by several communities and residential estates.

During the five days of launch activities, the management of the centre, in anticipation of heavy human traffic, deployed a large, multipurpose contingent of security services, comprising the Centre’s own security brigade, the Police, the Army, the Ghana National Fire service and the National Ambulance Service.