Londoner Threatens Court Action Against KMA

A Ghanaian resident in London, Mr.O.K. Mensah, has threatened to go to court against the Building Inspectorate Unit of the Kumasi Metropolitan Assembly (KMA) for incompetence and inefficiency.

Mensah intends returning to Ghana by the close of this month to effect the said legal action against the KMA.

He claims the incompetence of the Assembly, the development agent of the metropolis, had resulted in the damage of his landed property at Adiembra in Kumasi.

The complainant says in 1978 he acquired a building plot No. 27 Block E at Adiembra in Kumasi.

He said a permit NO.S/N50/SEC/19/79/1 was approved at a meeting of the Kumasi Planning Committee headed by Nana Akwasi Agyeman, chairman of the then Kumasi City Council (KCC) on February 1, 1978.

With aprroval no.433 the buidling permit No 157/77-78 dated February 23, 1978 was issued under the hand of City Engineer Kumah. According to him Architect B.B. Dwaseh had approved his building plan. The plot, which lease is currently deposited with the Barclays Bank in Kumasi, was bounded by a nature reserve.

Mensah has complained that his attention has been drawn to the fact that a squatter had built a house in the nature reserve adjoining his building. This has blocked all drainages, weakening the foundation and walls of the building because all water from the house collects at the basement.

He said he was convinced that the KMA, being the custodians, had not re-zoned the area. He also believed that the Inspectorate division had been corrupted to issue a building permit to the squatter hence closing its eyes to the unauthorised development on a nature reserve against Local Government Law Act 462 of 1993.

"It will be incompetence and criminal on the part of the building inspectorate unit to pretend not to know about such a development," he said.

Mensah says if the KMA does not take steps to demolish the said unauthorised building in accordance with section 51 and 52 of Act 462, he would charge the KMA with the damage caused to his property.

A building Inspector who accompanied this reporter to the site recently upon instructions of the Metro Development Control Officer of KMA, Mr. Andrew A. Asiamah, confirmed that the area on which the said unauthorised development had taken place was "indeed a nature reserve."

A report following the said inspection has since January been made to Asiamah for action.

At the time of filing this report, the squatter was still occupying government land (nature reserve).