Court places injunction on three Achimota buildings
The Accra District Court has placed interlocutory injunction on three buildings suspected to belong to Nana Kwesi Boadu, owner of the building housing Achimota branch of Melcom Shopping Mall. The buildings are said to have been constructed without permits.
This was contained in a letter signed by Mr Richard Adigbli, Court Registrar, and Ali Baba Bature, the Magistrate.
The buildings, which the court believes were of poor quality building materials is accommodating Achimota branches of Fidelity Bank, Standard Chartered Bank and the residence of Nana Boadu.
To this end, the court had ordered all the occupants of the buildings to evacuate upon receiving the letter which was issued on Thursday.
Fidelity Bank has begun the process of evacuating its assets from the building.
Addressing the press, Dr Alfred Okoe Vanderpuije, Accra Metropolitan Chief Executive condemned people who put up structures without the needed authorisation of the Metropolitan Assembly and its experts.
He announced that the assembly would soon undertake an exercise which would assess the strength of all high rising buildings in the metropolis.
He congratulated the rescue team comprising the Ghana Police Service, Ghana Armed Forces, Ghana National Fire Service, National Disaster Management Organisation, National Ambulance Service, St John’s Ambulance, Zoomlion Ghana and other organisations for their assistance.
He expressed his appreciation to the Israeli government for sending in an eight-member team to assist in the rescue mission.
Dr Vanderpuije appealed to residents at the disaster zone to exercise restraints and bear with the rescue team as they try to bring out those trapped under the rubbles.
So far 78 people have been rescued with nine of them confirmed dead.
Those alive are on admission at Achimota Hospital, Police Hospital, 37 Military Hospital and Korle Bu Teaching Hospital.
The Israeli team have detected additional nine dead bodies under the rubble and are doing drilling exits in order to bring them out.
Source: GNA
In Tamale, Melcom has just finished remodeling its multi-story building. When you see the way they have taken over a significant part of a busy sidewalk to construct a narrow set of steps flanked by two steep cement ramps you have to wonder who does the planning and architectural design for the company. Clearly, not anyone with any common sense or experience designing public access buildings. During the construction process, the too-steep ramps that take up more than half the space of the entire entrance, were first finished in slick cement tiles. (a real leg breaker during rainy season) A week later the tiles were torn out and replaced by lightly grooved concrete with chains at the foot of the ramps as though people were not supposed to use them, The new entrance is extremely inconvenient, dangerous, forces pedestrians out into traffic to pass the store and is a ridiculous replacement for the older entrance which had none of these problems. And you also have to ask, what municipal planning agency allowed it. When I ask this, people either laugh or look puzzled and say “permit?”