Tema Traditional Council demolition victims appeal for help

More than 1000 displaced residents of Tema Manhean whose structures were demolished last Wednesday have appealed for help to enable them to cope with the aftermath of the demolition exercise by the Tema Traditional Council (TTC). Some of the victims told the Daily Graphic that they were taken unawares by the taskforce, which descended on them with bulldozers to eject them from the land. Residents of the community have been rendered homeless following the demolition of their houses by a taskforce of the TTC. The residents, who are mainly fishermen and fishmongers, told this reporter that they had lived in the community for decades. The Chairman of the Area Residents Association, Mr Evans Horve Fiadu, said the community was allocated the land between the 1950s and 1960s by the TTC to facilitate their fishing trade. He stated that during the latter part of last year, and the early part of this year, the TTC started inscribing eviction notices on their structures. According to Mr Fiadu, they initiated series of meetings with the TTC with the view to amicably solving the problem but to no avail. Demolition He indicated that last Wednesday, bulldozers, accompanied by a team of police officers and members of the TTC taskforce, descended on the community and demolished the structures. “We are not litigating over the land with the traditional authority,” he stated, adding that “we are only appealing for help as we struggle to cope with the sudden misfortune that has left our people without a place to lay their heads and undertake their fishing vocation to earn a living”. Asked why they had not moved to another land allocated to them by the TTC, Mr Fiadu said the new place was not only closer to the sea but also a refuse dump, which was not habitable. TTC reacts The Tema Traditional Council (TTC) has, however, justified its action of demolishing the structures. The council claimed that it was ready to undertake a project on the site as the encroachers got more and more entrenched in the area. A source at the Tema Traditional Council (TTC) told the Daily Graphic that a 120-acre land area of which the U-compound was not part had been taken over by visiting fishermen who came to perform their vocation there many years ago. It said the land on which they were encroaching belonged to the TTC but because they were moving in and out, the council allowed them to continue to use the area. According to the source, the council, however, realised that the encroachers had sub-leased the encroached land while the original settlers moved upwards to an area near the Roman Catholic Church at Manhean. Quit order It said in June 2013, the TTC, sensing danger, announced a quit order to the encroachers and those the land was sub-leased to, because the TTC had a purpose for the land and more so their presence was creating a slum. The source explained that the quit order was not to punish those living in that area but rather to sanitise development of Tema Manhean. It said many of the encroachers understood the order of the TTC and had moved while others refused to heed the order. The source was of the view that the traditional council had shown some magnanimity by allowing the illegal settlers to continue to stay for a period of about one year just to enable them to move to the new area allocated to them by the TTC. NADMO Intervention Meanwhile the Tema NADMO has started registering the victims to enable it to support them with some materials. According to the Tema Metropolitan Co-ordinator of NADMO, Hajia Zainab Abdulai, the situation was not as it happened at Adjei Kojo. - See more at: http://graphic.com.gh/news/general-news/20918-tema-traditional-council-demolition-victims-appeal-for-help.html#sthash.XRwAsS5o.dpuf