Early this morning, bulldozers moved in and tore down a large section of the Kasoa Old Market, displacing about 800 traders who made their living from temporary sheds and hundreds more who did business around the area.
The Awutu Senya East Municipal Assembly carried out the demolition to clear space for a planned redevelopment of the market. But for the traders, it came as a heavy blow.
Many say they were not properly warned about exactly when and how much of the market would be pulled down. Some insist they only heard about it yesterday morning.
Others claim the Assembly had promised them a better alternative site, but the Iron City Market they were told to move to is simply not ready or suitable.Traders are refusing to relocate there.
They point to serious problems: the place often floods, and just recently a child drowned in the waters. They say officials visited after that tragedy and agreed improvements were needed, yet nothing has been done.
One petty trader, Eric, could barely hold back his frustration: “The NDC have not treated us fairly, especially Naa Koryoo. We heard she would demolish this area when she was campaigning. We asked her, but she denied it.
She has disappointed us hugely. My capital is not even up to GH¢1,000. How can I raise GH¢100,000 to rent a stall? Our vote for her has brought no benefit to us.”Another trader, Akosua, added that the short notice left them with nowhere to go: “They announced to us yesterday morning that they were going to demolish the structure. The Iron City Market is not an appropriate place for us.”
Samuel Fosu, a member of the Kasoa Petty Traders Association and father of seven children, described the pain many are feeling: “The Iron City Market is already occupied. The people there say there’s no space for us. We’ve gone to the Ministry and even the NDC headquarters, but nobody intervened for us.
Now they have come to demolish the structure. I have seven children, and this is where I earn my livelihood.”An officer at the Assembly, Rahman Abdul Mohammed, told Citi News that the traders had been adequately informed ahead of time and that the Iron City Market remains a proper relocation option. He said steps were taken to avoid causing traffic chaos in the busy Kasoa Central Business District during the operation.
The demolition is part of the Assembly’s bigger plan to redevelop the entire old market area. But right now, the focus for hundreds of families is much more immediate — finding a safe place to sell their goods and feed their children while they wait to see what happens next. Many traders say their entire capital is tied up in the market and they simply cannot afford to start over somewhere else. As the dust settles on the broken sheds, the big question on everyone’s lips in Kasoa is how quickly the authorities will provide real, workable solutions for the people whose daily bread has just been taken away.
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