President Mahama meets Kantamanto traders

President John Dramani Mahama has reached out to traders affected by the recent fire at Kantamanto Market in Accra.

The President in a meeting with the traders today, January 12, 2025, acknowledged the heavy loss and assured them of his administration’s support.

He said “One of the first things we need to do is to prevent these outbreaks from happening. In some cases, it might be due to long wiring and the use of inferior materials.”

He continued to say,“But in some cases, we cannot rule out what we call arson, that is people deliberately setting fire to cause destruction.”

Recounting similar situations in the past, he said, “I remember it happened before in 2013, when I was sworn in as president,there were market fires in almost every market which was quite unusual, and in many cases, the investigations show that people deliberately set fire to just cause chaos and confusion.”

He therefore said, “We need to look at how to prevent it from happening again, how to alleviate their plight, and how the market should be rebuilt.”

“We held a meeting with the security heads today to see how we can tighten security around all the major markets to prevent any such occurrence,” he added.

The President in the meeting with the traders concluded by saying “Just this morning we heard about the Techiman market fire, so it looks like something which is going to continue and we need to take quick steps to address it. We are asking the Fire Service to deploy fire tenders close to where there are major markets at night and installation of CCTV cameras at various markets.”

By Edem Mensah-Tsotorme