Coronavirus: KoKMA undertakes market segregation

Nii Adjei Tawiah, Korle Klottey Municipal Chief Executive, together with other officials from the Assembly have embarked on a demarcation exercise at the Adabraka market to ensure that traders adhere to social distancing.

The market segregation exercise was to ensure that not all traders would be at the market at all times but just a few at a particular time.

Addressing the traders Nii Tawiah indicated that, the assembly had observed that the traders were not adhering to the social distancing protocol which could help in halting the spread of COVID-19.

He said this was not the time for talking but time for the laws to be enforced to help halt the spread and ensure that everyone was safe.

“The virus is no respecter of persons and it does not know about market days or not. The way you go about your normal business claiming today and tomorrow are your market days, if we are not careful we would be doing more harm than good to ourselves and the Assembly would not just sit and watch. We are taking action now,” he said.

He, therefore, advised the traders not to ignore any of the precautionary measures outlined by the Ministry of Health and the Ghana Health Service to ensure they are safe and healthy.

Mr Bernard Yingura, the Coordinating Director of the Korle Klottey Municipal Assembly said for some time now they had been in constant communication with the leadership of the market to discuss ways of implementing and observing social distancing in the market.

However, “your leadership have conveyed to us that efforts to enforce the measure have proved futile so today we are here to do the separation ourselves so that the market would still be in operation, saying that if this is also not achieved, then, we would go-ahead to close it.”

He said because people would need foodstuffs during this lockdown season, that was why traders who deal in foodstuffs are allowed to come to the market to sell, thus all others who trade in non-consumable goods were not allowed to come and sell.

He said the Coronavirus that has led to the partial lockdown was no respecter of persons and so everyone had to adhere to the various precautionary measures outlined.

“We want all of you to corporate with us so that this exercise would be fruitful, if not we will close the market until you agree to all the arrangements we put in place,” he said.

Hajia Hasia Awudu, Vice President of the Adabraka market expressed appreciation to the assembly and urged all traders to adhere to the arrangements by the Assembly and only come to the market when they were supposed to come.