TMA demolished over 200 unauthorised structures

Tema, Feb. 22, GNA - The Tema Municipal Assembly, in a special exercise at dawn on Tuesday demolished over 200 unauthorised structures in the central business area.

A combined team of the security agencies, the Assembly's task force and utility service providing agencies undertook the exercise, which is to last for a week.

Briefing the GNA, the Assembly's Public Relation's Officer, Mr Frank Asante, said the exercise was part of the Assembly's beautification programme as well as to ensure the promotion of sanitation in the municipality.

He said the Assembly had held series of meetings with the various traders' groups to explain to them the need for the exercise and expressed his appreciation that about 70 percent of the people who really understood the need had already removed their structures before the exercise began.

Mr Asante said policemen and the Assembly's city guards would be patrolling the area to arrest and prosecute any recalcitrant hawkers who would flout the Assembly's directives not to sell at unauthorised areas. Phase two of the programme he said would follow soon after the one week period and this would involve the demolition of other illegal structures sited in the various communities either on sewer lines or on utility reservations.

He stated that every structure built without prior approval in the form of written permit granted by the Assembly was deemed illegal and would be demolished whiles the owners would be surcharged with the cost of demolition.

The PRO, however, said that the Assembly would also make sure rules governing maintenance of buildings under the National Building Regulation of the Local Government Act were enforced.