Confusion At Hawkers Market Registration

By William Yaw Owusu

Friday, 24 November 2006
THE long awaited registration of hawkers/petty traders for the allocation of stalls and spaces at the newly constructed ‘Pedestrians Shopping Mall’ at the Kwame Nkrumah Circle, commenced yesterday but had to be suspended soon afterwards.

This followed a disagreement between the leadership of the two hawkers associations on the one hand and the Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA) on the other over the lists to be used in the allocation.


While the executives of the United Petty Traders Association and the Positive Traders Association want the AMA to include their newly registered members in the exercise, the AMA insists that it would go according to the initial lists that the associations submitted.


Amidst confusion as people surged forward to register, Metropolitan Chief Executive, Stanley Adjiri-Blankson, was compelled to call off the exercise.


It took about 40 riot police to maintain order at the offices of the AMA where the exercise was to have taken place.


In an interview Ali Baba Bature, Special Assistant to the Mayor accused the leadership of the associations of inciting their members against the registration.


“We were going to follow a particular list that they had submitted but just as we were about to start, their leaders objected to it and demanded that we include their newly registered members.


“The Major says we should suspend it for the time being. We will hold an emergency meeting and take other measures which include the possibility of dealing with the people directly.”


He said the AMA will publish the initial list that the leadership submitted and asked them to come directly to register.


Mr. Bature said, “The leadership themselves recently in a meeting with us admitted that they registered members who are not hawkers.”


“We are getting reports that some of these executives have collected huge sums from people under the pretext of registering them and now that they are hot they want to shift the blame to the AMA,” he alleged.


But the Times learnt later that the AMA had allegedly cut down the size of the initial list and that may have incurred the displeasure of the leadership.


Samuel Nketia, an executive of the United Petty Traders Association alleged that they submitted about 2,800 registration forms, almost all of which were with photographs but “when we got here the AMA officials told us that there are only 98 forms with pictures.”


Paul Adu Boahene, of the Positive Traders Association said, “We submitted 1,587 applications, all with photographs but today the AMA is saying that only 201 are there.”


The two executives said they however support the decision of the AMA to suspend the exercise temporarily.