Landladies Cleared For Madina – Adenta Road

Three years of ejection orders to landladies near the Adenta Barrier ended last Friday dawn, with the demolishing of buildings which the Ghana Highways Authority (GHA) said had halted the continuation of the Madina-Adenta-Pantang Road Project.

The exercise was carried last Friday dawn under the supervision of heavily armed security men, who were brought to prevent any resistance from the landladies said to have consistently resisted every attempt by government to eject them.

Even though the exercise has been carried out, the women are still not backing off the land because they claim their land is not going to be used for the Madina-Adenta-Pantang Road Project, especially when it is being rumoured that some parts of the land was going to be sold to individuals at mouthwatering prices by some officials of the GHA.

Officials at the GHA have told The Herald that the compensation packages for the landladies had been left with the contractors on the project, namely China Water Electric Company Limited, but they have refused to go for them.

The Herald’s checks last Saturday indicated that the women were still bent on holding on to their land, hence they defied last Saturday’s rains in Accra, and with their relations and properties, stayed at the site where their homes once stood.

The leader of the four women, Madam Agnes Seho, who spoke to The Herald on phone said that they had nowhere to go and would also not accept the ¢2 billion compensation being offered to them as all they want is their land and nothing else.

She blamed the Highway boss, Mr. P. M. Dagadu of being behind their present situation, adding that whatever the case may be they would make sure President John Mills hears the harsh treatment they had gone through.

She said although the GHA had been successful in pulling down their properties, living them homeless, they were not going to move from the site of the building as they wanted them to do.

She lamented how on the night of the demolition, the police pounced on them around midnight and removed all their belongings before razing down their buildings.

The landowners are Agnes Seho, Felicia Seho, Gifty Kumedzro and Grace Nakie. They own a total of seven properties, which the Highway Authority want demolished for the road construction to continue.

Madam Seho owns four properties of single storey, sandcrete block type, while Felicia Seho her mother owns a single storey mass swish type, a single storey sandcrete block type with Gifty Kumedzro and Grace Nakie respectively owning a single storey, sandcrete block type.

Their properties, according to a document available to this paper from the GHA, are on the right—of –way, and hence ought to be cleared for work to progress.

Additional documents, an interoffice memo to the Highways boss Dagadu, signed by the Principal Valuer, K Archer-Kwajan, in the custody of The Herald, reveal that several efforts to get the owners of the said properties to come for their compensation have been fruitless.

The documents, dated August 8, 2011, stated that not even the review of the said compensation package upwards could entice them to vacate the road reservation to enable the contractor resume construction works.

But the women contend that beside their land not being on the way of the ongoing road construction, the package being offered them was woefully inadequate, considering the present economic situation vis-à-vis the cost of a plot of land and building materials.