There was a massive shakeup at Nkurakan, a Community in the Yilo Krobo Municipality of the Eastern Region by a joint team of Police, NADMO, and the Municipal Assembly.
Traders who ply their trades on the main Koforidua to Adukrom Highway were chased out whilst items were impounded.
Drivers who parked indiscriminately were similarly clamped down.
Nkurakan is notorious for gross indiscipline on the road during market days creating gridlock.
Thursday action is just a precursor to a massive decongestion exercise to be championed across the Region by Regional Minister, Seth Kwame Acheampong, who announced to the media after a stakeholders meeting that, absolutely nothing will stop the imminent exercise.
He said the decongestion exercise will begin from Koforidua, the regional capital.
The MCE for Lower Manya Krobo Municipality, Eric Tetteh during the exercise said,” the problem is not that we don’t have enough space in the Nkurakan market, but it is because the people think that they can easily get customers to buy their items by the roadside so they move out and this is motivating others to also join them on the street but since this is a major highway which sometimes on market days accumulates heavy traffic of not less than an hour and sometimes two hours for you to just pass through this place”.
According to him” One of the things that affect a market is when people cannot easily enter to buy if the traffic cannot flow cars cannot even stop and buy things from the market and so it is because there is no serious competition here that is why they think what they are doing is right”.
He reiterated that the road from Koforidua to Somanya is under construction and which according to the contractor there is the need to pave way for proper demarcations of the road to take place because the people have occupied the street to sell their items.
He added that it impedes the progress of work that is supposed to be done saying work is not done on the road at least twice in a week due to heavy vehicular and human traffic as a result of the activities of the market women during market days.
He highlighted that the decongestion exercise has taken effect today 10th February 2022 after a series of sensitization exercises with the market women and deep consultations and engagements with all other stakeholders in the municipality, this he said is fair enough for everybody to abide or comply with it.
“As a leader, you have to be fair and firm and I know very well that whenever you want to bring a change it will affect some people, those who benefit from the old order will begin to resist the change but I believe that this exercise is to the interest and the development of the Municipality so we will continue to pursue what is good for us,” he said.
He added that as part of the assembly’s long term plan for the expansion of the market, a nearby land at the outskirt of the town will be acquired and subsequently develop for the construction of an ultra modern market to occupy the majority of the market women who trade along the roadside.
– BY Daniel Bampoe