Accra, Dec. 19, GNA - The Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA) said on Tuesday that barring any unforeseen difficulties it would complete the allocation of stalls at the hawkers' market at Odawna to registered traders in two weeks.

Mr Ali Baba, Special Assistant to the Mayor of Accra, told the GNA that some 500 traders would be attended to each day under the exercise which took off on Monday.

He noted that the process had taken off smoothly after they had dealt with the initial problems that they were faced with. He said problems they faced initially were largely due to the desire of the leadership of the traders craving to satisfy their interest. Mr Baba said they were now treating the leaders of the various associations as ordinary traders to forestall the discrepancies that emerged earlier and also allocating the stores strictly by the register they had compiled.

He said AMA had built 4,500 stalls to be distributed to the petty traders and was optimistic that every trader duly registered would have one.

Mr Baba indicated that each trader was expected to pay 2.2 million cedis before being handed a shed but those who did not register at the time they were asked to do so were not likely to benefit from the exercise.

He stated that the only problem that kept showing up was issue of names, as most traders instead of using names on their voter identification card chose to use their nick or household names and this created confusion.

Some of the traders the GNA spoke to expressed optimism that they would be allocated with sheds, as they were part of the initial registration process.

They said their only worry was that the process was a little cumbersome since one ought to stay in a long queue for a long time. The AMA has warned that there would be a massive exercise to decongest the Central Business District once the traders have been settled at the hawkers' market at Odawna, near the Kwame Nkrumah Circle.