Assembly wants traders without stalls settled at Apremdo Market

The Sekondi-Takoradi Metropolitan Assembly (STMA) wants traders who do not have stalls at the Takoradi Central Market to move to the Apremdo Market, Captain Anthony Cudjoe (rtd), the Metropolitan Chief Executive, said on Wednesday.

Traders affected by the recent decongestion exercise at the Takoradi Central must move to the Apremdo Market voluntarily, he said when addressing the second ordinarily meeting of fourth session of the sixth assembly of the Metropolitan Assembly at Sekondi.

“We must device a means to sustain the move to get traders settle at the Apremdo Market without much force or daily presence of our security personnel”, he said.

Capt Cudjoe added that, “We need to do our best in this regard to make the traders themselves get settled at the Apremdo Market”.

He said the assembly hoped to meet the deadline for the completion of the street naming exercise which is progressing steadily in the metropolis.

Capt Cudjoe said 46,284 properties and 12,000 intersections had been identified for posting of signages of street names.

He said the metropolis had been grouped into 14 zones for the purpose of the exercise and data collection had taken place in all zones.

Capt Cudjoe spoke of the Ebola Alertness Campaign by the Metropolitan Health Directorate which had secured protective garments from the Ministry of Health and the Ghana Health Service and distributed them to hospitals and other health facilities in the metropolis.

He said health personnel had been sensitized about the disease and special units had been set up to handle possible outbreaks.

Capt Cudjoe asked members of the assembly to assist to educate the people to identify symptoms and to report any suspected cases immediately to the appropriate health authorities.

He said the assembly collected Internal Generated Fund (IGF) of 2,599,619.71 Ghana cedis as at June and this represented 60.6 per cent of budgeted annual IGF.

Capt Cudjoe said comparatively, this represented 32.68 per cent in IGF collection over the same period in 2013 which was 1,750,120.7 Ghana cedis.

Mr. Mohammed Ali, Presiding Member of the assembly, expressed concern about the perennial flooding in the metropolis which destroys properties.

He said periodic desilting of drains carried out by the Metropolitan and the Department of Urban Roads was not solving the problem.

Mr. Ali attributed the problem to uncontrolled development and appealed to people to jealously protect wetlands in the metropolis.