The Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA) is working closely with Women in Informal Employment: Globalising and Organising (WIEGO) to educate informal traders on spatial town planning on market development.

The programme is aimed at promoting greater inclusion and improving resilience among communities of informal traders and slum dwellers in the city.

Mrs Patience Nyarko, AMA Town and Country Planning Officer, said at a Wednesday forum that the interactive education would help the assembly appreciate the plight of traders in the market places.

This would inform city authorities in their planning and allow traders to understand how the AMA carries out its development programmes, she added.

The local government Act, 1993 (Act 462) designates District assemblies as planning authorities and empowers assemblies to perform any planning functions assigned to them under any legislation in Ghana.

Mrs Nyarko the interaction enhances information sharing in local development to expand the informal sector and to address challenges of the shrinking formal sector due to structural adjustment policies and rapid urbanisation.

She said: “Come together and fight for change in the town and spatial planning process for an effective development to create a better place to the needs of society, the economy and the country at large, if not our children will suffer the consequences.”

Mrs Rose Awudza, representative of the Ghana Federation of the Urban Poor, said the appalling stench from the markets causes a lot of diseases and appealed to the AMA to provide the markets with rubbish trucks to improve the sanitation and health of traders.

She also called for deep gutters to be covered to avoid water overflows and putting people at high risk of slipping into them.

Madam Comfort Akyina, a trader, expressed worry that some food vendors and hawkers refuse to undergo medical tests to determine their eligibility to sell and urged the AMA to take swift action to get them registered.

Mrs Magdalene Kannae, a representative of the Institute of Local Government Studies, pointed out that the street hawkers have responsibilities and called on the AMA to engage them on their roles in development.