CPP wants markets protected
The Convention People’s Party (CPP) has called for the protection of major markets in the country to prevent the spate of fire outbreaks.
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This, the party said, could be done by improving and strengthening night time patrols of the major markets.
The party is of the view that market women’s associations (MWAs) are well-organised structures with much to offer as potential partners for empowering women to contribute to economic development.
A statement signed by the Director of Communications of the party, Nii Armah Akomfrah, noted that MWAs were an important socio-economic group that would help grow the economy and create jobs, thus avoiding the welfare system that had blighted more advanced economies.
“We must ensure security of tenure/leaseholds of trading sites for members of MWAs since the women could create an asset-rich class, eligible for bank loans; and taxation of them would be justified,’’ the statement stressed.
It called on the authorities to pay attention to market women’s associations and sell the land to them (at peppercorn rate, freehold, leasehold, and so on), and allow them to construct or be stakeholders in purpose-built markets with adequate storage, security, toilets, running water and crèches.
The statement, therefore, urged authorities to sort out once and for all the issue of who owned the land that these markets operated on, whether it was for the government or they were stool lands.
“The time has come to stop limping on a two-track economy, a ‘mainstream’ one, full of toxic policies dictated by the IMF/World Bank, and an ‘informal economy’ which is teeming with entrepreneurs, the majority of whom are women,” it said.
The statement said the CPP said the incidence of fire, (or as others believe it as arson) in Accra’s central business district in recent weeks was the latest manifestation of racist and misogynistic policies of colonial, successive governments, and traditional rulers in Ghana and elsewhere in British West Africa.
The party noted that the “arsonist(s)” might get away with it because the targets of their psychopathic acts were dismissed as powerless market and street traders, majority of whom were women.
It said the women had been vilified for decades simply for having the chutzpah to resurrect again and again from the ashes, despite all attempts by the authorities to suppress them!
Recalling history, the CPP said premier Busia was dismissive of them as illiterate women while. General Acheampong rebuked them for the economic problems that his policies created.
It said Flt Lt Rawlings, Akatapore and their colleagues blamed them for inflation and the shortage of commodities and stripped them naked and lashed them publicly.
The CPP said others had since lined up to pour scorn and blame on them as markets were being torched, but many suspected the fires as a means to make way for expensive shopping malls ultimately to sell shoddy goods from the East.
The statement called on Ghanaians not to look on helplessly but to remind ‘’ourselves of some key issues that the market women’s associations predate colonialism”.
It said there were reliable records of regular trading sessions at Techiman and other markets in the sub-region and MWAs were the most important socio-economic organisations that African women owned and controlled and should not be toyed with but be protected as invaluable assets.
