Individuals affected by the fire outbreak at CMB in Accra have rejected the proposal of the National Disaster Management Organisation (NADMO) to relocate them temporarily for assistance.
The Korle-Klottey Municipal NADMO Director, Daniel Odei-Appiah in an interview noted that several attempts to persuade the victims to move from the devastated area have been unsuccessful, as the victims claim they are being forced to evacuate from their current location.
“Individuals involved are about 805 now on our records. We need to do auditing on that and also the structures that have been destroyed by the fire”.
“We need to know the number of structures completely destroyed and items that were in the structures. A disaster like this, we don’t need you here, we need to move you to a safe place and provide you with those things, but you say you are not going. I should provide you with the things here which is against the protocols,” Mr. Odei-Appiah noted in an interview with Citi News monitored by The Ghana Report.
The Assembly Member for the area, Frederick Quansah, noted that they have lost faith in NADMO’s attempt to offer support because they have failed on similar occasions over the period.
“Always when NADMO officials come, they just write names, and they don’t bring us anything, we don’t see anything from them. On the four consecutive times that we have experienced fires, they didn’t bring us anything, that is why I don’t want to entertain them”.
The fire, which started around 5:00 a.m. on Sunday, gutted about 350 wooden structures leaving hundreds of residents stranded.
It took four pumps from the Accra City, Circle, Ministries fire stations, and the Ghana National Fire Service (GNFS) headquarters substation to subdue the fire.
The destroyed shops were being used for both commercial and domestic purposes, and their contents, including ovens, LPG cylinders, deep freezers, bags of flour, and beans were all destroyed.
Last year, a similar fire incident happened on a Sunday, July 31, destroying properties in the area.
Moreover, in 2020, a fire destroyed over 200 shops in the same market leaving business owners and residents traumatized.