Bloodbath looms at Tema

Some young people in Tema are fully armed after an unknown person destroyed several buildings in Bankuman, a suburb of Tema Newtown in the Greater Accra Region.

The youth, backed by the Tema Traditional Council, have said they will cause trouble for the people who are responsible for the destruction near the Gao Lagoon. Sources say that the land was given to a company called Generations by the TDC Tema Development Company (TDC) in 2006.

Generations then sold it to the Bulk Oil and Transportation Company (BOST), which plans to use it for an LNG plant. It was said that the Tema Traditional Council gave some acres of the stretch to some foreigners because they thought it was under their control.

The land was being developed by the natives, who were putting up structures to live in, when the demolition happened. Bulldozers and armed guards are said to have done the demolition at midnight.

When the indigenous people found out about the exercise, they were able to stop it and take two bulldozers and trucks. The earth-moving machines were given to the police, who are now looking into what happened. But no suspects have been caught for the act, which has made the area even more tense.

DGN Online went to the site and saw several unfinished buildings, including high-rise buildings that were still being built. At a press conference in Tema, Nii Amarh Sompunu II, the Stool Secretary of the Tema Traditional Council, said that some companies that got land from the TDC had torn down the homes of people who claimed to own that land.

He was surprised that there was no court order backing the demolition, and some of the people who were doing the demolishing were caught at midnight while they were doing it and turned over to the police.

Nii Shippi said that a company came to the aid of the people who had been arrested and took care of the demolition. Nii Sompunu asked the Government to help stop people from getting on the Council’s land, since the Council would not stop trying to keep people out of its land.

Ian Okwei, the Protocol and Administrative Officer of TDC, responded to the Council’s claims by saying that they were not true. He said, “It was a mistake for the Traditional Council to make those accusations.” In 2006, a private company bought the right of entry to 16 acres of land in the area. That company later sold it to a state company. “The whole area described by the Traditional Council is in the Tema acquisition area of TDC and the heavy industrial area, which shares a boundary with the Council,” he said, adding that the area is not a good place to live because it has highly flammable companies like the West Africa Gas Pipeline and others. But Mr. Okwei said that the TDC would talk to the Council and try to work out their differences so that peace could be kept.

Source: peacefmonline