Regional News of Monday, 7 April 2003

Source: .

KMA pulled down two unauthorised structures

The Kumasi Metropolitan Assembly (KMA) has followed up on its threat to demolish unauthorised structures in the metropolis with the pulling down of a two-storey building for stores that was under construction at North Suntreso.

The storey building and an adjoining block, according to the KMA, were being illegally built on a major drain and a road reservation respectively.

This was the third time the assembly had acted to stop the construction of those stores project, which had for sometime been at the centre of legal tussle between it and the developer, Nana Samuel Kofi Boateng.

The KMA maintained that the structure were not only unauthorised but posed a potential danger to the North Suntreso community.

It warned that the demolition exercise was going to be sustained and asked all developers to follow the approved building procedure of acquiring permits before constructing structures to prevent their investments from going to the waste.

In September last year, the KMA twice pulled down these two structures but Nana Boateng re-started work on them after securing a limited interim court injunction against the assembly.

The 14-day court interim injunction was served on the KMA after it had carried out the demolition for the second time.

Nana Boateng, who claimed he had official approval for the execution of the project, filed a writ of contempt against the Metropolitan Chief Executive (MCE) and the Development Control Officer of the KMA at a Kumasi High Court.

He, apart from praying the court to convict the MCE and the Development Control Officer for contempt, sought for a 250 million cedis compensation from the KMA.

The court, however, threw out the writ and awarded a cost of 500,000 cedis against him when it was established that the injunction order was indeed served after the structures had been demolished.

Nana Boateng, faced with possible legal defeat, then withdrew the substantive writ from the court and one million cedis cost was awarded against him.

The KMA subsequently made series of publication to warn the public against paying monies to Nana Boateng to pre-finance the stores project and moved in finally to demolished the structures last Friday.