The President of the Ghana Traders Union Association (GUTA), Dr Joseph Obeng, has bemoaned the recurring spate of fire outbreaks in the markets.
According to him, the loss of goods is unfair on the part of the traders who will have to deal with the aftermath. Dr Obeng further noted that the fire could have been easily doused due to the close proximity of the Fire Service station to the of the fire outbreak.
“We keep on losing our capital through these fire outbreaks. This is not fair, we pay our taxes! we pay our levies to the metropolitan authorities. Fire service is there to monitor some of these things. They don’t even know that some of their hydrants are [not] working and it’s an institution. How are we controlling our institutions? If you look at the proximity, it’s so close for this to have escalated to this level.
“What shall we do? It’s an institutional problem because when we have these problems we come out with ad hoc solutions. We don’t have long term solutions to this and we have all these institutions taking all sort of monies from us as levies. So, this one, I don’t blame anybody; any trader. I blame the institution because we have officers. When we are building a structure like this, we have officers from EPA, we have officers from fire service. All these metropolitan assemblies and all that they are interested in is to get the monies, the levies that they are collecting from us. They don’t provide regular supervision to provide regular advices and also to monitor equipment like fire hydrants and all that”.
Insurance of shops in markets
Touching on the oversight of traders in insuring their shops, the GUTA president, noted that the insurance companies become averse to insuring shops which are in risk prone areas.
He further explained that areas where shops are “clustered” fall through the crack in receiving insurance packages from possible insurers.
“It is not about they insuring their wares, it’s about the insurance companies even taking the risk. Because when they come and the place is so congested, they don’t have the appetite to insure shops like that. So, that’s why I’ve suggested even in the past that we should find a way that we should include insurance levies in the fees we pay to the AMA. I am waiting for a time that it will be accepted. So, most of these people are there and their money is gone down the drain just like that. This particular one I’m not happy because these things keep reoccurring and there’s no solution in sight”.
Institutional framework on fire outbreaks
The GUTA President further urged stakeholders to institute measures to foil any fire incident in the future. This, Dr Obeng explains, is important in order to forestall traders losing their capital to fire outbreaks.
“One serious thing is that when it starts like this then it keeps on coming, if care is not taken, we hear of other areas also burning and all that. So, we should have an institutional framework that will protect us regarding the fire outbreaks in the markets”.
Giving an update on the previous Kaneshie market fire scourge whereby promises were made to help traders, Dr Obeng intimated that those were mere “talk”.
“When there are issues like this, people come and talk. When you want to pursue it, that’s trade unions like us, it doesn’t go anywhere. They will promise us modern market premises and all that. Those are talks to calm down peoples nerves during periods like that and when everything is settled; we go back to our normal business”.
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