Minister explores ‘Spare parts village’ for Abossey Okai, Kokompe dealers

The Greater Accra Regional Minister, Henry Quartey, is considering a spare parts hub for retailers at Abossey Okai and Kokompe.

The expansion of spare parts trade in these areas located in Greater Accra has resulted in congestion leading to traffic and other forms of indiscipline on the roads leading to these areas.

Consequently, a new spare parts trading centre has been mooted for automobile parts.

As part of his plans to ‘Make Accra Work’, the minister has “directed the two Municipal Assemblies thus Ablekuma North and Ablekuma Central to engage both Chairmen of the Abossey Okai and Kokompe spare parts dealers associations to visit the [proposed] land to see whether indeed the land has not been encroached. They should try and get all the necessary documents indicating that that land was procured by them.”

“Once that has been done, we will assist them to engage the services of lawyers to come out with proposals where financial interests will fade in to support them and then get them architectural designs to build what I will want to call a ‘Spare Parts Village’ in Ghana”, Mr Quartey said.

They arrived at a conclusion after discussions between spare parts dealers from the two notable areas.

Abossey Okai and Kokompe hosts the largest automobile parts market in Ghana.

Some dealers have hailed the new arrangements which they say would address indiscipline, with a well-planned site for business.

“Whenever they [government] are ready to embark on that decongestion, we have pledged our assistance to them so that they can move all those guys from the road for free flow of traffic,” one of the retailers noted.

The move is part of a larger plan to decongest the whole region beginning from major trading centres.

For example, at the Central Business District (CBD), the Regional Coordinating Council (RCC), with support from the security agencies, cleared off all traders at unauthorized locations.

The team ejected traders along the Kwame Nkrumah Avenue leading to the Kantamanto Market on Friday, April 9.

The minister supervised the exercise with plans to restore the vegetation that had been destroyed.

This is expected to be replicated in other areas, with sanitation paramount as most markets are engulfed with filth.

Sanitation is one of the government’s major promises to make Accra one of the cleanest cities in Africa in the next few years.