STMA gets tough on street hawking but relaxes COVID-19 protocols

Ghanaian Chronicle

Wed 27th May, 2020 19:48

The Sekondi-Takoradi Metropolitan Assembly COVID-19 Taskforce, made up of police and military personnel, which is enforcing the compulsorily wearing of nose masks in the metropolis appears to have relaxed.
On the other hand, the Assembly City Guards team continues to enforce the directive banning hawkers and traders from selling on unauthorised pavements, particularly at the Takoradi Market.
Guards were seen seizing items displayed by recalcitrant sellers who have defied the Assembly order not to sell on the pavements in Takoradi.
The STMA has created a satellite market at the Jubilee Park for hawkers and traders who do not have sheds at the Market Circle to move to and sell their items.
Though others have moved to the Jubilee Park making the place a busy market, recalcitrant hawkers and traders who have sworn heaven and earth not to move to the newly-created satellite market, continue to display their items in the open at the blindside of the City Guards.
They have been playing hide and seek with the city guards, to the extent that they hurriedly run when they spot the truck of the city guards arriving.
This hide and seek game has been going on for some time giving the hawkers a field day. However, luck run out of many hawkers yesterday, when the team devised a new strategy to clamp down on recalcitrant hawkers and traders.
Wares such as plastic chairs, cloths and others were seized by the task force to the shock and surprise of the traders.
Like a movie, before the hawkers and traders who had displayed their wares to could say Jack, the team had arrived and was seizing their wares.
In one of the encounter witnessed by this reporter, the hawkers could only watch the city guards carting their wares away without saying a word.
On the other hand, barely days after the STMA COVID-19 Task force deployed personnel to enforce the compulsorily wearing of nose masks as a means of fighting the pandemic it seems to have relaxed the exercise.
This is because, the personnel of the task force, who hitherto were spotted holding canes at vantage points enforcing the wearing of nose masks could no longer be seen.
This development has led to a slowdown in the wearing of the nose masks.
Some drivers and passengers particularly, are not adhering to the order because there were no security personnel readily available to enforce the directive.
It is not known why the team has relaxed, but it may have to do with the unorthodox way it handled the exercise.
The military particularly were seen whipping some of the indigenes who failed to wear the nose masks on the first and second day of the exercise.
This attracted the wrath of the victims with broadcast journalists questioning the reason behind the caning.
A video of a two military officers forcibly pulling out a young man from a car and subjecting him to severe caning, which has gone viral on social media, may have been the last straw that angered many residents, including journalists, apparently forcing the task force to relax enforcement exercise.

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