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The Kumasi Metropolitan Authority (KMA), is embarking on an exercise to get all legitimate Kejetia traders back as the first phase of the 248 million Euro Kejetia/Central Market Re-development project nears completion.

 Mr Osei-Assibey Antwi, KMA’s Chief Executive who hinted stopped short at setting timeliness to the completion of the three-phased project being executed by Messrs Contracta Engeharia Limited, a Brazilian contracting firm.

The Project started in July 2015 and was supposed to end in August 2018, but the KMA Chief Executive attributed the delay in the projects to law suits initiated by owners of buildings which stood in the way of the project sites and had to be demolished.

Mr Osei-Assibey said as part of a broad consultation scheme, validation and verification were on course to capture all former Kejetia shop owners on an authentic data-base to facilitate the reallocation of stores to them.

He told a section of the media in Kumasi in a media briefing that 93 million Euros, the first tranche of funds to commence the second phase of the project, has already been approved by Parliament in the current budget.

Mr Osei-Assibey said after resettling the former traders, the remaining space would be allocated to Central Market traders to be affected by the second phase, allaying the fears of all traders in the Central Market that they would all be sorted. 

 He said the teeming hawkers and transport operators whose commercial activities were causing congestion in the Central Business District (CBD), have also not been left out as the various satellite markets like Abinkyi, Adehye, Race Course and the Adomanu markets, have been allocated to them already.

“KMA will stop at nothing to sustain efforts at moving Recalcitrant Street/floating hawkers and commercial transport operators to the satellite market to rid the CBD of filth and congestion,” he averred.

He thanked the Kumasi Traditional Council, for its mediating role that enabled KMA to win the legal tussle saying that paved way for the continuation of the project.

Mr. Osei-Assibey rolled out KMAs meticulous plan to develop the Metropolis and this spanned sanitation, revenue mobilisation drive, construction of road network and de-congestion of the CBD.