Kumasi: Traders Sue To Halt Central Market Redevelopment Project

Eight traders who are also members of the Kumasi City Market Traders Union have sued to stop the Kumasi Metropolitan Assembly from commencing the Kumasi Central Market Redevelopment Project. They are trying to stop demolition of over 1,000 stores for the project. The traders also maintain that they have legitimately occupied our present business premises for well over

seven decades with some of us having inherited stores from our deceased relatives. They attached evidence of receipts of rent and also toll payments in an affidavit. Because of the project, traders were registered and relocated in order to provide them with stores within the new market on completion, the plaintiffs recounted. They said the assembly promised to provide a space to

all of them and in the newly built Kumasi City Market and therefore collected rent from us. But the traders have now accused the assembly of acting in bad faith. Aside from not securing the new places of business, the traders said the market spaces have entirely cordoned off our current marketplace and [the assembly] is eager to demolish our lockable shops in order to commence

the phase two of the project in flagrant disregard of our right to work to earn a decent living. Ashanti Regional Minister recently gave the traders at the Kumasi Central Market up to midnight of March 13 to relocate. The traders were initially given a March 7 deadline to relocate. They have said these developments have caused much fear, despair and desperation to us. In the

suit, the traders maintain that the Assembly has failed in its constitutional obligation to be fair and reasonable in the discharge of their duties as they have neglected our genuine concern anchored in law and accepted conventions. The traders in their writ say they fear that if the assembly is not stopped, their constitutionally secured rights to work and undertake economic activities would be badly violated.