Over 4,000 spare parts dealers agreed to relocate until politics came in – Henry Quartey

The Greater Accra Regional Minister, Henry Quartey, has revealed that over 4000 spare part dealers at Abossey Okai agreed to the proposal to relocate and had appended their signatures until opposition arose.

According to him, that was when it came to light that the government had to build almost 40,000 shops at Afienya where they were to be relocated to be able to accommodate the huge number of dealers.

The government in 2021 began the move to decongest the capital city, Accra, by relocating onion sellers and spare parts dealers.

It proposed that spare parts dealers were to be relocated to Afienya.

Henry Quartey said: “I had a series of conversations with the then chairman of the Abossey Okai Spare Parts Dealers Association, and interestingly, they bought into the idea. I have on my desk about 4,000 people who have appended their signatures, consenting to the fact that they were ready to move. That was when I got to know that there were about 10,000 permanent shops and about 9,000 tabletop shops, so we were going to build about 40,000 shops for them in the new location.”

But last year, a group called the National Concerned Spare Parts Dealers threatened to demonstrate against the move.

The Minister said the move become retarded when a disagreement between those who wanted to move and those who didn’t want to move happened.

“Along the line, politics got into it. A group at Abossey Okai said they were not ready to move, and one section said they were ready to move, so they started fighting among themselves to the extent that they were incited to go on a demonstration,” he said.

SSD/NOQ

Watch a recap of business stories below:



Ghana’s leading digital news platform, GhanaWeb, in conjunction with the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital, is embarking on an aggressive campaign which is geared towards ensuring that parliament passes comprehensive legislation to guide organ harvesting, organ donation, and organ transplantation in the country.

Click here to follow the GhanaWeb Business WhatsApp channel