Birim Central Assembly defends demolition of structures

The Birim Central Municipal Assembly has described reports that it destroyed 50 kiosks, containers and other structures at Akyem Oda as misrepresentation of the true story.

This was contained in a statement issued at Akyem Oda on Thursday, signed by Mr. Samuel Badu-Baiden, Assistant Director, and copied to the Ghana News Agency (GNA).

Throwing more light on the issue, the statement said, in July last year, the Assembly decided to rehabilitate the Akyem Oda Lorry Park due to its deteriorating nature.

It said the next phase of the rehabilitation was the construction of modern stores around the lorry park, which would accommodate more traders since Akyem Oda has become highly urbanized.

It said to that end, series of consultative meetings were held with commercial transport owners, traders and others who would be affected by way of disruption in their daily activities.

The statement said the next step the Assembly took was to prepare an alternative place for the drivers and the traders at a place called Old Premier Hotel at Akyem Oda.

The statement said all the drivers relocated to the new place but some of the traders refused to move to the area.

It said the assembly held a meeting with the traders who were still occupying the places where the stores were to be constructed, and were told that preparation was almost completed so they should vacate the place for the project to take-off.

“We mutually agreed that the traders should vacate the place by June ending last year for the work to start the following month,” it said.

The statement said when the June deadline elapsed, the traders did not vacate the place as agreed earlier on but rather appealed for extension of the deadline to December 2011 to enable them take advantage of the brisk business prior to the Christmas.

“Based on humanitarian reasons, we rather gave them up to the end of January 2012 to leave. After this new date, they were still adamant to leave so the assembly took the matter to Court”.

It said the Court after hearing both parties ruled that the traders were guilty and that they should leave to enable the assembly to continue with the projects.

The statement said the traders still did not comply with the Court’s decision and in middle of May, the assembly went back to the court where the traders were finally given to vacate their place by June ending.

“It is quite surprising to know that the said traders were still occupying those places until July 04 when the assembly went to seek quit order from the court to eject them.”

It said the court gave the quit order on Tuesday July 04 and further to that, the assembly together with the police informed the traders about the order with photocopies of the “quit order” pasted at some vantage points.

The statement said the assembly’s task force started to enforce the court’s decision on July 09 and that the affected traders were 17 in number, of those occupying containers and another 14 traders who were using tables to sell second hand clothing.

“When you look at the interest of the 31 traders and the larger interest of Akyem Oda and for that matter the entire Municipality, then one could be tempted to believe that the traders are only sabotaging and thwarting the developmental agenda of the Birim Central Municipal Assembly”.

It said some of the steps the assembly had taken were that all the affected traders would be given first offer during allocations when the stores were finally constructed.**