The Klottey Korle Municipal Assembly (KoKMA) is constructing stalls at some selected markets in the municipality for hawkers, with the aim of checking trading activities on the streets.

The initiative was approved by the membership of the assembly and is expected to benefit hundreds of traders who display their wares on pavements and trucks and sometimes have to carry them on their heads.

The Klottey Korle Municipal Chief Executive, Nii Adjei Tawiah, disclosed this to the Daily Graphic in his office at Adabraka.

“The project will redesign our markets and provide small stalls for traders. The stalls will be about four feet wide,” he said.

PPP

Mr Adjei explained that the assembly was considering a public-private partnership (PPP) for the venture and had already received proposals from some investors who had expressed interest in the venture.

Some of the commercial places to be redesigned, he said, included parts of the Circle-Odawna Pedestrian Mall, the Tema Station and the Abuja and the Adabraka markets.

“Because of the lack of space, we are going to build upwards.

We have to make good use of the available space and that will also help us provide more stalls for more of the traders,” the MCE said.

When completed, he said, the stalls would also be occupied by people engaged in petty trading such as food sellers and the like.

He said the issue of hawking and selling on street pavements could be attributed to rural-urban migration.

“We are hoping that the government’s flagship programmes, such as Plating for Food and Jobs, One-district, One-factory and many others, will end youth migration to the urban centres, since it will become more lucrative for them to stay at home and work and earn incomes than to seek greener pastures in the urban centres,” he said.

In addition, he said, the assembly was undertaking the venture because of safety and sanitation concerns, considering the fact that the activities of street vendors and hawkers were making the environment dirty and compromising security in the municipality.

“They sell and mess up the areas and it is also not safe because they create congestion on the streets and are at risk in instances of motor accidents,” Nii Tawiah said.

The Coordinating Director of the KoKMA, Mr Bernard Yingura, said the assembly had a 50-member task force on the ground from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. each day to ensure that traders did no hawking and selling on the streets.