Just when the brouhaha over the redevelopment of Kejetia Terminal was dying down, another one has risen as two different factions within the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) and some members of the Kejetia Traders Association (KTA) have clashed over the debris at the terminal.
A serious clash over the weekend ensued between some members of the KTA and one Yakubu Tony Aidoo, a well known NDC serial caller in the Ashanti region, over the metal gates to the stores earmarked for the demolition at the terminal.
Whiles the traders wanted to take off the gates for their new stores at the Race Course Terminal where they had been relocated to, Yakubu Tony Aidoo also had a notice from the Coordinating Director of the Kumasi Metropolitan Assembly (KMA) giving him power over any metal wreckage at the terminal, hence prevented the traders from taking the gates to their shops out of the barricaded terminal.
This resulted in a serious scuffle between the traders and Yakubu’s gang.
The Public Relations Officer of KTA, Andy Kwofie, who spoke to journalists, insisted that his people needed to take the gates away because they had been permitted by authorities at the KMA to do so in their previous meetings, and stressed that the NDC foot-soldiers could therefore not prevent them from taking the gates away.
But Yakubu and his group also maintained that they had been given the permit from KMA to collect all those wreckage from the place and would not allow the traders to send them out.
The resultant scuffle lasted several minutes with both groups not backing down from their entrenched stance.
A third group which came to the scene out of the blue was another NDC foot-soldier group that claimed they had been mandated to take care of the Race Course Terminal and therefore had some authority in the movement of persons and properties from the Kejetia Terminal to Race Course.
This group also fought Yakubu and his group and tried to prevent them from sending the metal wreckage away.
Consequently Today gathered that these two NDC foot soldier groups have been selling the metal debris as scraps, hence their resistance to allow order to prevail.
Deep throat sources close to Yakubu revealed to this reporter that Yakubu sells the scraps to help his polling station members in the form of buying scratch cards for them to call on various news and political programmes on radio to speak for the president and NDC and that was why he was given that permission.
However, the other group also insisted they were members of the NDC and must benefit from the debris as well.
In a twist of events, the Public Relations Officer (PRO) of KMA, Godwin Okuma Nyame, told journalists that the assembly had permitted the traders to remove their metal gates to their new stores at the Race Course but agreed with them to do so before the excavator reaches their building.
He stated that the directive for them to send their gates out was on humanitarian grounds as every store or shop owner at the terminal would be duly compensated and therefore did not, in actual fact, have to take anything from there.
As at now Today has learnt that calm has been restored between these groups as the NDC foot-soldiers had been asked to allow the traders to take away their metal gates.
Meanwhile, work is currently ongoing at the terminal, and most of the traders have relocated to any of the satellite markets depending on their area of trading.
<<Print>>