Tema Children’s Library land sold to a Chinese man for the construction of a casino – South Dayi MP alleges

The Member of Parliament (MP) for South Dayi, Rockson-Nelson Dafeamekpor, has alleged that the land housing the Tema Children’s Library, which was built by Ghana’s first President, Dr Kwame Nkrumah, has been sold to a private investor.

In a post shared on X, on Thursday, October 12, 2023, the MP further alleged that Tema Development Company (TDC), led by its managing director, Alice Ofori-Atta, sold the land on which the park and library are built to the Chinese man who is going to build a casino on it.

“This is the land containing Tema Children’s Library. This was allocated when Nkrumah built Tema Township.

“Today, TDC led by Alice Ofori Atta has decided to sell off the Children’s Library land in Tema to a Chinese man for purposes of building a casino. Yes, you heard me, a casino,” parts of the post reads.

The post by Dafeamekpor had a video of the site of the children’s park which showed that construction works had already commenced.

A man could be held in the video stating that the trenches were being built over the park to put up a wall.

“There are people digging trenches here trying to build a wall. You can see markings on the ground… apparently, it has been sold to a private investor.

“We want to know who is behind this thing,” the man could be heard saying.

Meanwhile, the Protocol and Administrative Officer of TDC, Ian Ocquaye, in an interview with GhanaWeb indicated that the claim by the MP that his outfit released the land in question is totally false.

“A Member of Parliament who is supposed to be making very factual statements should not be seen to be making such frivolous allegations. In the first place all the statements that he made are baseless, without any evidence,” he said.

He also explained that public lands are vested in the care of the District, Municipal or Metropolitan Assemblies per the inception of the Local Government Act and the TDC can only give a sublease to the Tema Metropolitan Assembly for the usage of such lands if a formal request comes from the Assembly.

He added that the land in question was given out to the Tema Metropolitan Assembly in 2012 based on a formal request from the Assembly to undertake a development project and the TDC has had nothing to do with it since then.

Ocquaye shared correspondence between the TDC and the Tema Metropolitan Assembly which showed that the said land was released to WB IPEX Limited for the contraction of a recreational centre in 2012.

View the MP’s tweet plus the video and the documents from the TDC below:

BAI/OGB

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