NPP Office To Be Demolished

The  Shama District Chief Executive (DCE), Enock Kojo Appiah, has threatened to demolish the constituency office of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) situated near the police barrier at Inchaban in the district.

The DCE signed a letter dated March 10, 2015 threatening to demolish the office because it was a temporary structure and that the constituency NPP failed to produce a permit for it.

DAILY GUIDE gathered that the current Shama constituency NPP office was an existing temporary structure belonging to one Mr Mahama, an NDC activist, who sold the property to Mr Ato Panford, a staunch member of the NPP in the area.

Mr Panford, who was a parliamentary aspirant of the party in the 2012 parliamentary primaries of the NPP in Shama, reportedly renovated the structure and handed it over to the Shama NPP for use as a constituency office.

Addressing a press conference on the issue in the district, Joseph Amoah, Shama constituency chairman of the NPP, averred that before works on the office structure commenced, an application bearing a site plan and the drawings of the office were submitted to the assembly for a permit.

He alleged that the assembly failed to respond to the request and that construction started only after the period stipulated in the regulations of the assembly for issuance of permit after it had been requested had elapsed.

Amoah stated that during construction, technical officers from the Shama District Assembly came to the site and instructed the workers to site the structure at a particular place and they obliged.

He noted that at no point, during the period of construction, did the assembly question the construction of the office at its present location.

He therefore wondered why the DCE waited 'after the completion of such a [project] before threatening to demolish it.'

The NPP chairman disclosed that the party petitioned the Western Regional Minister, Paul Evans Aidoo, on the issue and the minister recommended that certain internal structural adjustments be made in collaboration with the District Works Engineer, adding that the minister said the office structure would not be demolished.

He therefore called on all NPP activists in the area to be calm and disregard the DCE's threat.

FROM Emmanuel Opoku, Shama