Christmas is over, leave the streets– AMA tells hawkers

Christmas is over, leave the streets– AMA tells hawkers

Mr Alfred Vanderpuije, AMA Boss

The Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA) has asked hawkers to adhere to their Monday ultimatum to vacate the streets for the markets to sell their wares or face the full arm of the law.

The AMA warning is coming after it gave a Monday deadline to the hawkers to vacate the streets.

This will not be the first time the assembly is ejecting the hawkers who constantly find their way back to the streets soon after the exercise.

As the Assembly mounts yet another exercise to clear the streets of hawkers, the Mayor of Accra, Alfred Vanderpuije said they were only permitted to sell during the Christmas festivities and since the yuletide is over, they should go back to the markets.

Mr Alfred Vanderpuije told Joy News that, “the Christmas activities are over and we expect them to go back to the markets and leave the streets. During the Christmas we know that several traders bounced into the city, want to sell everywhere …people wanting to buy so we are saying that the Christmas activities are over, they need to go back into their appropriate places.”

He said last year, it was the AMA’s goal to overcome street hawking in the capital but “it thumbs down [to] corporation between the AMA taskforce and the Police and I think we have not been effective at that and we are working at it but at this juncture the commercial activities with respect to this association around Christmas and the New Year is over.”

The exercise which started Monday morning will affect hawkers who ply their activities at the Tema Station, Makola, Tudu, CMB, Kaneshie, Kwame Nkrumah Circle and other parts.

The AMA boss urged that Ghanaians “must all work together to maintain the objectives of making this city one of the best cities in the world.”

“If anybody does not heed it and wants to their own thing, then we will deal with them on another level,” he warned.