Makola Mall fire: GUTA jabs SSNIT for putting up ghetto-like, poorly-structured market

The leadership of the Ghana Union of Traders Association (GUTA) has appealed to the government to come to the aid of the traders whose shops were destroyed by fire over the weekend.

GUTA says the traders have lost thousands of Cedis to the fire.

On Saturday, October 21, the Fire Service said that after receiving a distress call of a fire outbreak at Makola at 2324 hours, a dedicated crew from the Accra City Station proceeded to the scene and arrived in just two minutes.

Upon initial assessment, they realised that the fire was well alight and fast spreading and thus, called in 8 more additional fire tenders to augment their efforts.

Nine fire tenders in all were dispatched to the scene.

The fierce fire, according to the fire service was successfully confined at 4 AM by the ‘adept Firefighters’ thereby preventing any casualties in the process. About 200 shops used for selling perfumes and wigs were damaged.

The intensity of the fire caused marked cracks in the walls of some shops forcing them to collapse in the process of intense firefighting.

Despite the fire damages, over Two Thousand shops, ECG substations, adjoining banks and structures were salvaged from the fire which took Firefighters almost Ten hours to finally extinguish. The cause of the blaze remains under investigation.

Speaking on this matter, the Communications Director of GUTA told TV3’s George Kwenning said “As GUTA we are going to support our members but we expect the government to come to the aid of these business communities as a matter of urgency because they have lost everything.

“We will be meeting those who own the facility, we will also be meeting the Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA) and see the way forward. Most of our markets our custom-made markets, which are built by the people themselves. We only have a few markets that have been put up by the authorities like the Kanehsie Market is well-organized.

“This [Makorla] market was put up by SSNIT so it is not part of the customer markets, this is [supposed to be] a well-structured market but we can’t say that, it is like a ghetto, and for SSNIT to put up such a structure, it is unfortunate, we don’t know what informed them to put up such a structure.

“I was even surprised that the fire service was able to come here to put the fire off because there is no space. We expect SSNIT to, as a matter of urgency, relocate these people to engage in their trade and we want the government to support them to engage in their trade.”

Source: 3News.com