A joint security taskforce within the Accra metropolis has razed to the ground over 200 shanty structures sitting along the coast of James Town, a suburb of the nation’s capital.
The taskforce, made up of police, army, National Disaster Management Organization (NADMO) and Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA) and led by Assistant Superintendent of Police (ASP), Samuel Azugu, stormed the shanty area early Tuesday morning, where they pulled down all the ‘dens’ along the coast, before setting them ablaze.
While a large section of indigenes lauded the taskforce for intervening, by clearing the area, others hurled wild insults at the taskforce for being heartless, because their actions would render several hundreds of people homeless.
The messy area, according to some residents who spoke with The Chronicle, has been a hidey-hole to most criminals.
Besides, they said the shanty structures harboured drug addicts and that seeing the area cleared by the armed taskforce, was a great relief to them, “because they can now find their children when they are missing”.
Speaking in an interview with the paper, ASP Azugusaid said the decongestion exercise formed part of the AMA’s move to clear all illegal structures located in flood-prone areas and criminal flashpoints. He explained that the illegal structures were havens for hard core criminals, whores and drug addicts.
According to him, whenever a criminal fled into the shanty area, it was very difficult to grab the absconder, adding the area was a converging point for criminals, where they shared their booties. The sanitation in the area was, indeed, nauseating and so clearing the entire area would enable the AMA to properly plan and give the fishermen in the community a clear view of the sea from the coast.
ASP Azugu said the taskforce did not face any resistance from the settlers, “because we came here well-prepared for anybody who would have dared take a wrong move to resist our exercise”. ASP Azugu told The Chronicle that the taskforce carried a similar decongestion exercise at Old Fadama, where some miscreants quickly relocated to the area after their illegal structures had been bulldozed down.
He warned that the taskforce would redeploy its men to the coast of James Town should any illegal structure spring up on the cleared site. Four young men who had a fierce confrontation with the army personnel at the site were brutally dealt with for obstructing the officers in green, in the discharge of their official responsibilities.
Source: Inusa Musah and Eric Wiredu || The Chronicle
