A KUMASI Circuit Court presided over by R.M. Kogyapwah has placed an injunction on the purported eviction of sitting tenants of 21 bungalows belonging to the defunct Kumasi Shoe Factory in Kumasi by the Ghana Armed Forces (GAF).
The court gave the order, debarring the military officials from executing their threats on October 8 after upholding a claim contained in a writ filed by the tenants on Wednesday at the court.
The GAF had threatened to use force on Saturday, October 8, 2011, to throw out the tenants, who are reportedly numbering 200, from the bungalows to enable the security agency to start revamping the facility.
But Judge Kogyapwah stressed that the Ministry of Defence, through its soldiers, agents or assigns, could not carry out the eviction threats against the tenants of the bungalows until the case was heard.
Earlier, the plaintiffs, through their lawyer, James Marshall Belieb, had prayed the court for a declaration that their purported eviction from their bungalows by servants, agents and assigns of the ministry was unlawful. The plaintiffs are twenty-two persons representing the tenants, while the Ministry of Defence, Divestiture Implementation Committee (DIC) under the Ministry of Trade and Industry and the Attorney General�s Department are the defendants.
Lawyer Marshall Belieb, in the writ, described some of the plaintiffs as former employees of the company and others as retired public servants.
The plaintiffs, he said, got to occupy the bungalows as their official residences when the company became defunct.
They paid their rent and the Ministry of Trade and Industry acknowledged them as such until in 2000 when the DIC mandated PriceWaterhouseCoopers, a management consultant firm, to write to each of the tenants to bid towards the bungalows they occupied.
According to the writ, DIC wrote to them to bid towards the properties because the company had been put on divestiture and the bungalows were up for sale, an offer the plaintiffs accepted.
The tenants then formed an association, GIHOC Footwear Co. Ltd. Sitting Tenants Association, and placed one composite bid with the DIC to purchase their bungalows.
The DIC, consequently on September 10, 2009, acknowledged in a letter to the secretary to President Mills that the plaintiffs had offered to buy the company including the bungalows and that they should await its decision.
�Whilst awaiting the decision of the DIC as to the outcome of the bidding process of the company on divestiture, the Ministry of Defence, represented by the Defence Minister, Gen. J. H. Smith, together with other persons, performed a ground-breaking exercise at the premises of the company,� the writ said.
According to the plaintiffs, but for media reports, they would not have received any information from the Defence Ministry or their landlords, Ministry of Trade and Industry, about the divestiture of the company.
The tenants therefore wondered why soldiers should be intimidating and giving them verbal ultimatums to vacate their bungalows.
The latest ultimatum, as stated in the writ, was given by a soldier who was identified as Hyacinth Nii Armah Tagoe on September 30, 2011. The ultimatum was that the tenants should vacate the area by October 8, 2011 or risk being thrown out by force.
The tenants stated that in the event that their landlords wanted possession of the bungalows, due process as regards landlord-tenants relationship had to be followed.
The plaintiffs pointed out that their right of possession to the bungalows was being threatened and unless the courts intervened, it would be trampled upon with impunity by the Defence Ministry.
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