The Ghana National Fire Service (GNFS) has denied any responsibility for the fire that destroyed some shops at the Kejetia market.

It claimed that the facility’s managers violated safety regulations.

The GNFS explained that it had advised the facility’s operators to renew its fire certificate as well as work on some defects on the facility before issuing the certificate, but they had failed to do so.

The Service also claims that the managers failed to address some fire safety issues, which contributed to the outbreak.

Ashanti Regional Fire Commander, ACFO1 Henry Giwah, said, “so far as I’m concerned they don’t have a fire certificate, but our men are there making sure that things are working. We identified some lapses, we informed management of the market, they promised to fix it for which reason we have not even renewed their certificate. We were going to make sure those things are rectified first. They promised to fix the defects when we wrote to them, that is where we were and the fire occurred”.

“They actually applied for renewal, and we told them exactly what we want them to do before we can renew. There are minimum qualifications they needed to meet before it could be granted”.

The Service he added has started a probe into the matter and will soon come out with their report on the outbreak.

“We have started with the investigations, we have been able to identify the shop the fire started, and we are yet to know exactly what happened before the fire. We do take account of eyewitnesses but most at times we want to ascertain such accounts vis-à-vis our own professional way of investigations, before we can confirm and put it out on air,” ACFO1 Giwah said.

“If we found some people culpable there are some punitive measures that even management can take against those operating the market,” he stated.