Traders, Ama On Collision Course

Over Proposed Tudu Park Terminal

Documents leaked to GO indicate a looming stand-off between traders and drivers on the one hand and the Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA) and a contractor, Continental Sikaman, a company contracted by the AMA to develop the Tudu Terminal on the other.

This morning therefore at the Tudu Lorry Park, trader associations, including vegetable sellers, drivers and chop bar keepers, will be holding a press conference and hitting the streets in protest against the move to relocate the traders at the Novotel Lory Park and construct a three storey business complex and a lorry park.

Rumours that some of the women intend hitting the streets topless, with others displaying their traditional 'red flags' to show the degree of anger, also abounded at the market when GO last called.

The beef of the trader group, drivers and chop bar keepers is that the AMA and Continental Sikaman have decided to give them a raw deal even when the AMA continually taxes them, and also when the current trading environment had been put in place by the traders themselves after fire had gutted the area.

According to the statement, a copy of which was leaked to GO, the intention of the press conference is to make the security agencies, the media, the political authorities, the ruling administration as well as the general public aware of the situation for the appropriate intervention and redress.

The groups also warned that should the appropriate authorities fail to give them the appropriate response they would not hesitate to defend all their investments to the last drop of their blood.

They alleged that a few weeks ago, they had information that a business they can identify was coming to raze the lorry park and its environs to the ground to enable a proposed project take off. After calls and contacts with the AMA by their executives for discussions, the AMA failed to give them the necessary hearing.

They later followed those calls up with a petition, the statement went, with the AMA still ignoring the over 100 traders, most of them women doing business there.

“The AMA did this, knowing fully well that the over 100 traders can conveniently raise the quantum of money needed to put up that infrastructure or redevelop the Park…They know it because traders in the business district do not need to prove how resourceful they are,” they said.

They claimed that when the December 31st Market toilet facility collapsed, it was the traders who repaired and maintained it till the AMA realised the project had become a money machine and schemed to reclaim it.

They also claimed that when the premises of the second hand clothes dealers were gutted by fire it was the traders who took the initiative and reconstructed the infrastructure after the AMA had vacillated for weeks on end.

“We were also able to refit the December 31st Market when the contractors did a shoddy work on the new market,” the traders submitted further.

They also cited the case of the Makola Shopping Mall alleging that when traders were forced to relocate it was the rich businesses which later benefitted with the larger section of the poor women being robbed of their livelihood because they became perpetually displaced.

“We the three collaborative members of the mentioned association, including the GPRTU and Chop Bar Keepers Association, wish to state categorically that we did not invade the said piece of land but were allocated that place by the then Accra City Council to facilitate our businesses…During that time we were literally compelled by the AMA to put up our own structures and sheds with cement blocks to prevent fire hazards…” the statement said They further claimed that the GPRTU and vegetable sellers have also been operating their business at the Tudu Lorry Park ever since without any hindrances, paying their taxes regularly as is required of all honest citizens of the land.

The group therefore demands that the AMA put a halt to the project for negotiations to begin.

They assured that if however, the AMA persists in getting the project off the ground, they have the cash and machinery to construct the facility and should therefore be given the chance to take over the construction of the facility in the name of peace.