Old Fadama demolition: Community leaders voluntarily removed structures, not AMA - Mayor

Mohammed Adjei Sowah, the mayor of Accra, has said that media reports that the Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA) spearheaded the demolition exercise that took place Wednesday, April 15, 2020, at Old Fadama, a suburb of Accra are inaccurate.

According to him, the leadership of Old Fadama aka Sodom and Gomorrah, voluntarily removed the wooden structures they had mounted as homes to pave way for contractors to dredge the Korle lagoon.

The mayor said the exercise carried out was after he and the sanitation minister, Cecilia Dapaah held a meeting with the community leaders to that effect.

“It is not AMA that had gone there to demolish the structures. It is the community leadership that engaged their people who voluntarily removed their structures," the Accra mayor told Paul Adom-Otchere on Good Evening Ghana on Thursday.

The mayor explained that he has not sent anybody to go and demolish "as we do with people who are occupying unauthorized places".

Adjei Sowah said that the people who had encroached part of the Korle lagoon had to vacate the place for the filth that had engulfed the area to be cleared as soon as possible before the rainy season begins.

The decision taken by the community leaders, he explained, will save lots of lives during the rainy season as well as prevent floods in the area as well as Odawna, Adabraka Sahara and Alajo.

“As a leader, there are tough decisions that sometimes you have to take. In case we don’t dredge, and the rains fall heavily, you understand that there’s going to be a lot of chaos, there will be flooding in Accra and its impact would be much more than what we see. So there are compromises and sacrifices that people have to make occasionally for the greater good of all of us,” the mayor added.