Government accused of allocating stores at Kotokruaba market to NPP members only

The Central Regional Minister, Mr. Kwamina Duncan and the Mayor of Cape Coast Metropolitan Assembly (CCMA), Mr. Ernest Arthur have been accused of sharing stores at ultramodern Kotokruaba market to  only card-bearing members of the New Patriotic Party (NPP).

The Central Regional executives of opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) including the Regional Chairman of the party, Mr. Bernard Allotey Jacobs, the regional communication officer, Mr. Kwesi Dawood in a press statement issued to the media in the region, expressed disappointment about NPP’s plans to evict NDC members who are traders in the market.

The redeveloped Kotokruaba market provided with more lockable stores, banks, a Crèche, car pack, restaurants, health facility among others was commissioned a month before the last presidential elections by the former president John Dramani Mahama in 2016.

But the group observed that after the commissioning, a team of CCMA Assembly members, technocrats from the Assembly as well as representatives from the market women were put together by the assembly to do the allocation of which they did in accordance with a ruling from the court.

Consequently, the CCMA approved the list and copies were sent to court per the ruling but another group of NPP supporters went to court for an injunction restraining the assembly from sharing the lockable stores to the owners.

The defendants were the former MCE for the Assembly, Mrs. Kuranchie and the former Central Regional minister, Mr. Kwaku Ricketts Hagan but unfortunately after NDC lost the last general elections both the plaintiffs and the defendants agreed to an out of court settlement.

But the NDC executives hinted that because NPP is now in power, they have changed the keys and locks to the stores and removed the names of those perceived to be NDC members and replaced them with theirs.

Meanwhile some of the traders in an interview with mynewsgh.com, expressed disappointment about the unfairness in the sharing of the lockable stores as majority of the traders who owned shops at the market were rejected.