Dr. Agnes Adu has described the state of the Trade Fair Company in La when she was appointed CEO of Ghana Trade Fair Company Ltd.

Speaking to Channel One TV, she explained the controversial shakeups her office has undertaken at the establishment, citing dilapidation and delinquency.

Dilapidation

"Over the years, the facility had broken down to an unrecognisable state that we really couldn't function here," she said. "The dilapidated structures were a danger to the public."

She accused the previous National Democratic Congress (NDC) government, led by President John Mahama, of neglecting the facility, the company, and the workers.

"The day I walked in, [workers] hadn't been paid for 18 months. When I took over the site, it was such a broken-down place. The company itself, the employees hadn't been paid in 18 months under the previous government," she disclosed, emphasising: "There was not one building I could walk in and say this was a place we could do events. It needed urgent rehab."

"The New Patriotic Party government, led by President Nana Akufo-Addo, the board of directors, and myself as CEO, quickly came up with a plan to make sure we turned this place around, remodelled it, and then turned it into a modern space where we can actually have meaningful events," Dr. Agnes Adu said.

Delinquency

The GTFL boss noted, "The things you saw here when I took over in 2017 did not belong to the company."

She said there were "maybe only two businesses paying rent" using the facility.

"They had stopped paying rent to the government agency running the place. They were renting the bare space and were in arrears," she explained.

"The people that were evicted when I came – they were all delinquent tenants," she said, explaining that delinquency here meant these were tenants who were notoriously not honouring the agreement between them and the company.

While there were "many" attempts to get them off the property, she regretted they were "not vigorous enough."

Delay

Dr. Agnes Adu said getting the defaulting tenants off the property was the "biggest challenge" to the implementation of the master plan of the reimagined Ghana Trade Fair Centre.

"It took almost three years going through the courts" and overcoming "resistance," she emphasised, to explain the project's delay.

However, she assured there were no legal hurdles because all appeals and injunctions had "exhausted" themselves.

"What we're building right now is the exhibition and convention centres," she added, providing a progress report for a facility comparable to the UK's O2 Arena in London and the US's Javits Center in New York.