A market constructed to boost economic activities and bring relief to traders at Kwaso in the Ejisu Municipality of Ashanti Region has been left unoccupied, four years after its completion. The GHC890,000 facility remains empty whilst traders continue to ply their trading activities by the roadside.
“Some of us used to occupy the market but upon realizing that those by the roadside were attracting almost all the customers, we decided to join them too. The only way to force us back to the market is when the local authorities put in place measures to stop anyone from trading by the roadside. That way, all the customers will be left with no choice than to come inside the market and buy stuff”, Juliet Nsiah, a trader, proposed.
The unfortunate development came to light when officials of the Public Interest and Accountability Committee (PIAC) inspected some projects that have received funding from the Petroleum revenue.
“This is quite regrettable. If the traders at Kwaso are not utilizing the facility, then where is the value for money?”, a member of PIAC, Ransford Tetteh quizzed. The Ejisu Municipal Assembly has however assured that steps will be taken to fully operationalize the market.
“Even though we were not involved in the construction and allocation of the market, we will ensure that if a trader fails to occupy her space within a stipulated period, we will reassign it to someone interested and ready to occupy,” Municipal Engineer, David Ameyaw told the PIAC officials.
The team also inspected the roundabouts from KNUST to Boadi on the Kumasi-Accra road, and decongestion of the Ejisu section of the N6. An amount of GHC5 million of oil revenue was sunk into these.
Work on the rehabilitation of the Ejisu-Abankro-Abira road including critical accesses also received GHC7 million from the petroleum revenue. PIAC observed that, in all these projects, the local authorities were not involved in the execution of work.
“The lack of involvement of local authorities by the central government in executing petroleum revenue funded projects is problematic because it denies the assemblies from monitoring and supervision of the projects.
“No matter where the projects are coming from, local assemblies must be involved from sod-cutting to operationalisation so we get value for money”, Mr Tetteh implored.
SOURCE: 3NEWS