Some grain traders who defied the Bolgtanga Municipal Assembly’s order and returned to the new market after they had been fully relocated to the old market, also known as the Techiman Market, have been arraigned before court. This was after a physical altercation with a security team sought to ensure they complied with the Assembly’s directive.
When the MCE for Bolgatanga, Rex Asanga spoke to A1 Radio, he explained that while the arraignment before the court was extreme, the law had to take it course to prevent others from flouting same.
“The traders, some are in court you know. It got to that level. There are about 10 or 12 grain traders who insisted that they wanted to sell grains there [at the new market]. They [the market women] were found still going to sell there [at the new market] knowing we had outlawed that. The police went there to enforce the Assembly’s directives and there were altercations and all that”.
“That shows that we are really serious. We are not joking around,” he stressed.
On the reallocation of shops to the traders, the MCE noted that some of the traders had not paid any rent to the Assembly for years. This he said meant that the shops had defaulted to the Assembly. The Assembly thus asked the traders to reapply for the shops. The traders then received them based on ‘a “first come, first serve basis”.
Meanwhile, Mr. Asanga has commended media practitioners and the various media outlets for their unflinching support in his attempts to relocate grain traders from the new market to the old market as well as the resituate the slaughtering of ruminants to the Yorogo facility.
“It is not every day you will get every media house or journalist to just be supporting a course taken by a politician. But in these two activities, I got the media completely in support of it. They really went out of the way to give us support and I think that is what kept us on. We were encouraged by the support. It appears that the population was also waiting for somebody to take those bold decisions,” he said.
A1radioonline.com|101.1 MHz|Mark Kwasi Ahumah Smith |Bolgatanga|Ghana
