KMA Mayor warns Kumasi traders
The Mayor of Kumasi, Samuel Sarpong, has warned that the reconstruction of the Kumasi Central Market is due in two months time with or without the agreement of the traders.
He said plans are afoot to modernize the ancient market to suit the standard of the metropolis and therefore will not compromise that on the altar of fluke agitations from the Kumasi Market women.
The Mayor was reacting to an unexpected walk out by the traders during a stakeholders meeting in Kumasi to deliberate on the way forward for the modernization of the central market which was gutted by fire some weeks ago.
The meeting was necessitated after the committee set up to investigate the cause of the fire that gutted the market last month, submitted its findings to the Regional Minister.
The Committee, chaired by Assistant Chief Fire Officer Ebenezer Simpson, established that property worth GH 5.2 billion cedis was damaged. Also, a total of 239 stores and 430 stalls mostly wooden structures at the area referred to as Eighteen (French Line) at the market were destroyed.
The Simpson Committee's report also found that the fire started from stall number G30 owned by one Esi Konadu after a parazone powder touched a lighted candle. Items destroyed included used clothing, batteries, glasses, cosmetics, assorted canned drinks and provisions.
The report recommended that the KMA go ahead with its plans to construct a new market complex befitting the status of Kumasi to replace the existing one.
But half way the meeting, leadership of the traders groups could not come to terms with the decision of the Regional Coordinating Council (RCC) and the Kumasi Metropolitan Assembly (KMA) to start the reconstruction in 'just two months time'.
The Regional Minister Kofi Opoku Manu and the KMA Mayor sat in their chairs dumbfounded for several minutes while the traders walked out of the meeting with shouts of “yempini, yebesi yadie” (to wit “we will not agree, we will construct our own stalls”).
The traders who were all wearing red attires with red arm bands contended that no well meaning leadership would start such a project within just two months of notice to the people concerned, knowing that people had credited goods worth millions.
TODAY learnt that a week before the meeting the Regional Security Council (RSC) planned to prevent the traders from putting up structures at a section of the market by sending a combined police-military team to the venue at dawn to pull down some structures which were springing up.
But the traders who had gotten wind of the planned operation by the RSC also engaged the services of some people they called “our security” apparently to help them resist that move by the RSC.