AMA evicts traders at Tip Toe Lane for Kwame Nkrumah Interchange
Hundreds of traders along the popular Tip Toe Lane at the Kwame Nkrumah Circle in Accra were yesterday forcibly ejected in what the police said was the beginning of a widespread exercise to pave the way for the construction of the Kwame Nkrumah Interchange.
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Container shops, a prayer space for Muslims, kiosks and other wooden structures were all pulled down, while their owners salvaged their property.
But the exercise left in its trail bitter comments between the Member of Parliament (MP) for Ayawaso Central, Mr Henry Quartey, and the Greater Accra Regional Police Director of Operations, Chief Superintendent Mr Sylvester Bayuo.
The MP accused the police of using needless force to carry out a politically motivated exercise targeted mainly at supporters of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), while the police boss, in turn, accused the MP of inciting the agitated traders against the police and the Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA), necessitating police reinforcement.
Mr Bayuo told the Daily Graphic that the AMA had, through letters, requested police protection to evict traders and squatters illegally occupying the Tip Toe Lane, noted for its thriving mobile phone business, to make way for the construction of the interchange, the sod for which was cut by President John Dramani Mahama only last week.
He said the police, numbering 30, had arrived with officials of the AMA and that the exercise was progressing smoothly until Mr Quartey appeared on the scene to incite the anguished traders.
His incitement, the police boss said, made him call for reinforcement to avert any untoward scenes.
But Mr Quartey refuted the allegation of incitement, saying he only waved at the people who are his constituents and proceeded to plead with the police and the AMA to give the traders time to relocate.
His branding of the exercise as a politically motivated one, a claim supported by the assembly woman for the area, Madam Elizabeth Adomako, he explained, was because the area earmarked for the eviction exercise was mainly occupied by NPP supporters.
The MP said the Tip Toe Lane was dominated by NPP supporters and that the AMA had specifically chosen to drive them out of business by directing countless decongestion exercises there when a more serious situation in the same vicinity – the space adjoining the lane and directly opposite the Ghana Telecom head office – which he claimed was inhabited by supporters of the ruling National Democratic Congress never saw the needed decongestion.
He called on President Mahama to intervene for an amicable solution, wondering if Ghanaians could no longer have some peace even in their own land.
But a member of the Ayawaso Central Sub-Metro and executive member of the Ayawaso Central Constituency of the NDC, Mr Johnson Akey, who expressed disappointment at the behaviour of the MP, told the Daily Graphic that the MP was wrong in his claim that the exercise was targeted at NPP supporters.
He said the decongestion had nothing at all to do with political partisanship but that it was long overdue as a result of the overflow of trading activities which regularly led to the blocking of the busy roads.
Daily Graphic/Ghana
