250 Houses Razed Down
HUNDREDS OF residents in the Tafo-Pankrono Constituency in Kumasi have been rendered homeless after a devastating demolition exercise was carried out by the Kumasi Metropolitan Assembly (KMA) to eject alleged illegal private estate developers.
City authorities, led by the Mayor, Samuel Sarpong, had accused owners of the over 250 demolished houses of encroaching on a large parcel of land belonging to Osei Kyeretwie Senior High School (OKESS).
Shocked by the extent of damage to their landed property, majority of the victims, who sorrowfully recounted the number of years they had laboured to put up the structures, rained curses on the Metro Chief Executive, accusing him of being heartless and insensitive.
According to the dejected landlords, they were awakened around 4:30am by turbulent reverberations produced by bulldozers only to see that their buildings were about to be destroyed along with a heavy police presence.
Church members who were worshipping at dawn on that fateful day were also not spared as several church buildings were flattened despite pleas from worshippers to be allowed to take their movable properties out.
However, some occupants of buildings marked for destruction were seen packing their personal belongings amidst wailing as others cursed the authorities and the traditional leaders, including chiefs who sold the land to them.
Many victims were also seen making phone calls, probably to seek interventions from “big men” they know or to inform other property owners and loved ones about the development.
“We have been here for over eight years, so why the demolition now? Where are the chiefs who sold the land to us, can't we stop them now?” Why were we not informed?” These were some of the questions victims kept asking as they sobbed pitifully.
All the landlords alleged that they bought the parcels of land from the chief of Breman Nkwontwima, Nana Kwaku Duah II, and were duly given allocation papers to that effect.
Speaking to DAILY GUIDE, the Chief Development Officer of the KMA, Amoako Asiamah, said the demolition was necessitated by over-encroachment on OKESS school land by private developers.
According to him, over two-thirds of the 168-acre land belonging to the school had been taken over by encroachers who were illegally developing the area, adding that “none of them had a building permit and if they did they should show them.
“These developers have pulled down the wall that the school authorities and the Member of Parliament for the area, Anthony Osei Akoto, built to protect the land from encroachers.
“We have given them several warnings, some of which could be seen written on their walls, but lack of logistics has crippled us to undertake this exercise”, he explained when asked why it took such a long time for this exercise to begin and why landlords were not informed.
According to the KMA Development Officer, the exercise will continue till they recapture all the area previously fenced in by the school authorities and the MP as long as they are not restricted by any authority, after which the assembly will mobilize funds to re-fence the land.
According to the Headmaster of the school, Samuel Agyepong, the government of Ghana, by a Legislative Instrument in 1998, acquired a total of 168.28 acres of land for the school.
This, according to him, allowed the school authorities to build a wall around the school land, and which helped them recover over 140 acres of the entire land as at the time.
“As you can see my brother, the school dormitory is sharing a fence with this encroacher who has shrewdly built a new fence for the school, so there is no place for expansion”, the headmaster said.
“As I speak to you now, we need a place to build a dormitory. These people do not have foresight as their fore fathers who demarcated the land for school did”, he stated soberly.
According to him, land guards have been terrorizing them since the controversy started, so the demolition was a relief to the school although he deeply sympathized with the affected persons who might have been deceived by the chiefs to release millions of cedis.
An old student of the school, Agyei Frimpong, commended the city authorities for the demolition exercise.
Ironically, about five landlords verbally donated their buildings to the school for use, asking the authorities not to pull them down.
The demolition team confirmed the story but said they needed to document the terms of the donation to make it legally binding.