Let’s restrict selling to markets

Everywhere in the world, city authorities provide markets for traders and buyers to transact business.

The markets afford consumers the opportunity to look for and buy the items they desire or need in a congenial atmosphere. Consumers are also presented with several options to choose from and are able to shop in secure environments.

Further, since consumers procure their items at specific locations, they are able to go back to the shops if they need more of particular items or if they have issues with the goods or items purchased.

Consumers are also better protected from shoddy, inferior or expired products in the markets because the traders have a fixed location.

The government is also able to get more revenue from trading activities at the markets due to the permanent addresses of the traders or sellers.

Through the market system, many traders and buyers have also not only become better acquainted, but have struck business deals and relationships that have inured to the benefit of both parties.

That is why the Daily Graphic lauds the government and the country’s city authorities for taking a keen interest in the development of our markets.

It is that enthusiastic interest in the welfare of both the traders and consumers that has resulted in huge investments in our markets, which over the years have just been composed of stalls and few shops that sprawled in some locations in our cities.

The unorganised nature of our markets is what has resulted in the annual outbreaks of fires in major markets across the country in the past few years, leading to the destruction of goods and properties worth millions of Ghana Cedis.

However, we believe that it is the streamlining of activities in the markets, as well as the reconstruction of otherwise informal and unplanned markets, that had encouraged the incessant market fires that engulfed the country.

It is in the light of this that we doff our hats for the government for making available US$100 million for the phase one of the Kumasi Central Market reconstruction project.

We only pray that the sod would be cut by President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo without delay for the project to commence, as the Chief Executive of the Kumasi Metropolitan Assembly (KMA), Mr Osei Assibey Antwi, had indicated that all drawings and other preparatory works for the project had already been completed.

The consternation of the Daily Graphic, however, is the increasing spate of street hawking in our cities and the concomitant frequent knockdowns of hawkers who have made nonsense of markets that have been provided in recent times.

There have been several instances of traders refusing to occupy these markets. They prefer to sell along major streets with the excuse that they have not been allotted shops or stalls. If they have, they have asserted that members of the public do not patronise their wares because of the location of those markets.

Goods and other consumables are meant for the market, while cars and vehicles are for the roads and vice versa. We, therefore, urge the city authorities, including the KMA, to ensure that traders and sellers only advertise and sell their wares at locations provided as markets.

That is the only way we can make huge investments such as the US$100 million that has been committed to the Kumasi Central Market project count and truly benefit the country.