ASHMA collapses 40-year-old ‘rotten’ storey building

The Works and Engineering Department of the Ashaiman Municipal Assembly (ASHMA) has demolished a 40-year-old one-storey building.

The building, situated at KBT in the Naa-Merley Electoral Area, had all its beams and walls full of huge cracks and the iron rods exposed.

ASHMA secured a court order for the exercise after the landlord of the house failed to heed to the series of appeals the assembly made to him to evacuate the dilapidated structure last year.

In the early morning of Friday, Mr. Isaac Lamptey, the Ashaiman Municipal Works Engineer, in the company of about four armed policemen stormed the residence with a bulldozer.

Tenants numbering about 10 had to pack their belongings while the landlord, who only gave his name as Nene Awotse, was spotted moving to and fro.

The assemblyman for the area, Ayiku Kabutey, lauded the assembly for moving in to pull down the dilapidated one-storey building, which, according to him, had been a death trap and a worry to many residents in the area.

Mr. Kabutey said he had personally been in contact with the landlord to entreat him to vacate the building but to no avail.

Mr. Lamptey, in an interview with a section of the press, said there were four rooms downstairs and six on the top floor.

He said the assembly needed to move in to demolish the structure because the landlord failed to obey their instructions.

“He requested for nine more months grace periods to allow him relocate, but looking at the building, we are afraid it can collapse at any moment and we don’t want to record such a calamity,” Mr. Lamptey said.

He hinted that the assembly had received complaints of other death trap buildings in the municipality “and so in a few days we will embark on a massive inspection of one storey and above structures and those ones which will not pass our test will go down.”

The demolition exercise cost the assembly GH¢7,000 and Mr. Lamptey said the landlord may be surcharged with the cost.

The landlord declined to speak to the press.