Maritime Authority fire: Preliminary probe points to electrical fault     

The Ghana Fire Service has said its preliminary investigation has revealed that an electrical fault is most likely to have caused the fire that gutted the office of the Ghana Maritime Authority (GMA), contrary to widespread suspicion of arson.

Speaking in an interview with Citi News’ Anass Seidu, the Public Relations Officer of the Ghana Fire Service, Billy Anaglate, said they are currently investigating to ascertain the real cause of the fire.

“We are still investigating to know what exactly caused the fire. But our preliminary investigations pointed to electrical origin – that the fire might have actually been caused by an electrical fault within the premises, but we are still investigating to unravel the exact cause,” he added.

Records of the Maritime Authority – some dating back to 2002—were destroyed when fire gutted parts of the authority’s head office in Accra.

The fire, which mostly affected the finance department of the GMA, reportedly took place a day ahead of an Economic and Organised Crime Office’s (EOCO) forensic audit into the operations of the Authority.

“Unfortunately, we do not have a backup of what we lost, and the Authority has all this while been keeping records manually,” the Director-General of the GMA, Kwame Owusu, noted.

The police are currently investigating officials of the Authority over the fire.