Cape Coast Assembly inaugurates task force to decongest city

The Cape Coast Metropolitan Assembly (CCMA), has inaugurated a ten-member security taskforce to rid the city of all unauthorised structures, traders and hawkers in the city to befit its status as the former capital of Ghana.

The taskforce made up of ten personnel drawn from the Ghana Police Service and Metro Guards had been given a one-month mandate starting from March 26 to April 26, 2018.

Inaugurating the task force, Mr Kwamina Duncan, the Central Regional Minister, charged them to remove all makeshift structures along the streets within the city.

They are also to eject recalcitrant traders and hawkers selling on the shoulders of the roads, intersections, open places, security zones as well as drivers who have turned shoulders of the roads, streets and pavements into permanent parking spaces.

Additionally, they were tasked to ensure that traders who had been allocated stalls within the Kotokuraba market occupied or forfeited them.

The move by CCMA is aimed at bringing sanity back to the ancient city,. where roadside trading activities had resulted in thick human and vehicular traffic congestion thereby prolonging traveling hours while stealing in the night had become rampant.

The exercise would be extended to all the markets in the Metropolis as well as all the principal streets particularly, the Kotokuraba central business district and Abura market to effectively improve on sanitation, security, selling and buying.

He admonished them to stick to their core mandate and cautioned against seeking their personal interest, favouritism and biases in their operations and to peacefully engage the affected persons and groups to explain the essence of their operation to woo their support avoid confrontations that could breed confusion and unruliness.

He mandated the taskforce to maintain law and order at all times.

Mr Ernest Arthur, the Metro Chief Executive, expressed the Assembly's determination to effectively communicate with the traders and explain the exercise to them to court their support to make it a success.

He indicated that the Assembly was leaving no stone unturned to keep the former capital of Ghana from filth, indiscriminate waste disposal and undisciplined traders and hawkers.