Nkawkaw, May 17, GNA -Fire on Tuesday gutted a number of shops and tailoring shops at Nkawkaw leaving in its trail an estimated five hundred million cedis loss.

Bails of fabrics, tailoring machines and cash worth over five hundred million cedis were destroyed in the inferno as the fire swept through two containers, a kiosk and a wooding structure belonging to a tailor and two seamstresses in the early hours of last Tuesday.

The items destroyed also include 300 pairs of shoes, 150 shirts, eight electric sewing machines, 25 manual sewing machines, two over-lock machines, 50 jeans trousers, 20 bundles of khaki and polyesters materials, 10 bails of wax prints and school uniforms.

Additionally, a cash of 10 million cedis cash locked up in the two containers and kiosk was burnt.

A shop owner and a victim of the fire, Mr. Kwasi Agyekum of Akonta Tailoring Limited, told the GNA that he received a telephone call at about 1300 hours last Tuesday that his container was in flames. He said by the time he got to the scene, officials of the Ghana National Fire Service were already there trying to put off the fire, but because it took over two hours to bring the fire under control, all the items in his shop got burnt.

According to Mr. Agyekum, he returned from Accra the previous evening with quantity of goods to stock the shop only for it to be destroyed by the fire the following morning.

He appealed to the Kwahu West District Assembly and the National Disaster Management Organisation (NADMO) for financial and logistic assistance to enable him and the other victims to start their business again.

Meanwhile the Ghana National Fire Service is investigating the cause of the fire.