ACCRA, May 16 (Xinhua) — Doris Acquah is a 38-year-old mother of two who until Sunday, May 5, 2013, traded at the popular Kantamanto Market located in the western part of the Central Business District (CDB) of Accra, the national capital.
She usually wakes up early in the morning to prepare her children?s food, bathes them and heats water for her husband, Wilson Acquah, a mechanic, to bath.
?? By?6.00 a.m., Doris drops her children off in a preparatory school before proceeding to her market stall at Kantamanto Market, Ghana?s revered?center?for Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs).
Although official statistics has not been able to put a figure to it,?Kantamanto?is believed to provide livelihood for some tens of thousands of people and their dependants.
Here, Doris sells bales of high quality assorted second-hand clothing, popularly called ?Oburoni-wawu? (dead-Caucasian) or ?folks? (affordable for all folks) procured from bulk importers.
She and other women in the market use their proceeds to raise their children in school, support their siblings and ageing parents back home, and?supplement household expenditure.
Business?on Saturday?mornings are unusually brisk, as most of their bulk buyers come from different parts of the country to buy their wares in huge quantities.
There are also other traders who sell imported second-hand shoes, electrical gadgets, curtains, woolen carpets and other household items.
There are other groups such as food vendors, hairdressers, music shops, and tailors who patronize the Kantamanto market as well as head-porters who earn their living from there.
At the close of business, all unsold goods are kept in warehouses erected by other entrepreneurs on the Ghana Railway Authority (GRA) land that houses the Kantamanto market.
Head porters and truck-pushers cart these goods for the traders to their stalls in the morning and go through the reverse routine in the evening for six days in a week.
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Bend-Down boutique
There is a funny stigma some people attach to the purchase of second-hand clothes, especially students who tease one another over going to the ?bend-down boutiques?.
Usually, these second-hand clothes are poured onto tarpaulins spread on the bare ground so buyers usually have to bend down to pick them up, hence the name ?Bend-down Boutique?.
???? Saving
Most of these traders still practice the traditional??susu??system of saving whereby special collectors come around daily to take part of their proceeds for safe-keeping at a commission.
The system also allows the traders to obtain short-term credits from the patrons, as conventional banking seems too cumbersome for many of them.
Their capital is a running one, sometimes borrowed from?susu?operators or other micro-finance institutions, which needs to yield quick returns to meet the high interest rates of the lenders.
It is therefore not surprising that most of these traders do not have business accounts with the mainstream commercial banks or financial institutions, talk less of taking insurance policies against man-made or natural disasters.
Then on Sunday, May 5, disaster struck! ?The whole of this sprawling trading center was razed by fire, resulting in the loss of assorted goods worth several hundred million Ghana cedis.
?? Lost livelihoods
Doris and her colleagues whose livelihoods were dependent on trading in this market were thus plunged into a state of despondency, as they suddenly found themselves faced with the problem of fending for themselves and their dependants.
Also affected were numerous groups of people who travel from all over the country to buy in bulk from these traders for retail in markets across the country; they too lost their source of supply, which will dislocate their livelihoods for as long as the market remains un-built.
The cause of the devastating inferno is provisionally being attributed to faulty electrical connections.
Government, through the city authorities, the Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA), has offered temporary space with existing stalls in the Hawkers? Market at Odawna around Kwame Nkrumah Circle in the heart of the capital.
Here, these destitute traders have been asked to ply their trade while the burnt market is being rebuilt and transformed into a modern market.
When Xinhua visited the new market, the dejected traders were seen in small groups discussing one issue or another of common interest.
The tens of thousands of traders who lost their wares in the inferno have a huge task of mobilizing new capital to re-start their petty trade.
Doris, who described herself as one of the ordinary traders, said she had lost goods worth over 5,000 Ghana cedis or about 2,525 U.S dollars in the fire, counting the number of bales of used clothing she had lost.
Elisabeth Nyama, 50, and mother of six, held a warehouse at the now charred market where she kept her wares. She also claimed she lost goods worth over 50,000 cedis (5,495 US dollars)
Michael Agyei, who now retails shoes offered by his friends at his new stall at the Odawna Market, glosses over his loss:? ?This won?t take me anywhere because I don?t know how much I am going to make on these shoes even if they are bought,? he told Xinhua in an interview.
?I had goods worth over 20,000 cedis (2,198 dollars) but here I am, depending on my friends to re-start my business,? he added.
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?? Restart Capital
He believed that if no assistance in terms of a start-up loan comes his way, he may have to go back to his village in the Ashanti Region.
Francis Ampong Gyima, whose boutique was wiped out in the fire and lost close to 70,000 cedis worth of goods, believed he would need at least about 20 percent of that amount to start all over again.
Gyima?s case is not different from others who spoke to Xinhua.
The President of the Ghana Union of Traders Association (GUTA), George Ofori, said the whole issue must be considered a national disaster.
?It is the responsibility of government to look for ways of addressing the issue of re-start capital for them since it is difficult for even existing businesses to find capital for expansion in this country,? Ofori urged.
He believed that government should intervene and institute measures to mitigate the hardships of the traders.
Besides difficulties with raising fresh capital to restart their businesses, the traders also fear that if government reconstructed the market, the stalls would be priced beyond their reach, citing previous instances where traders had suffered a similar fate.
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?? Ownership Blues
Meanwhile, government?s compulsory relocation of the?Kantamanto?traders to Odawna is also breeding some ill-feeling among supposed owners of the stalls in this Hawkers? Market.
The?traders believe city authorities should enter into negotiations with the existing stall-owners for an agreement before they (Kantamanto?traders) are made to occupy them.
The Odawna market was built in 2007 and allocated to hawkers, but most of the beneficiaries have refused to occupy them.
However, as soon as the AMA announced it was re-allocating these stalls to destitute traders from?Kantamanto,?the earlier beneficiaries resurfaced and started laying claim to them.
The traders are alarmed by rumours doing the rounds that the land on which the burnt market was located had been sold out to Chinese businessmen.
?? ?The?rumors?about the acquisition of the land by some Chinese have been going round long before the fire incident,? Doris explained.
However, in a telephone interview, the Mayor of Accra,?Alfred Oko Vanderpuije, denied the claims, saying it was a figment of someone?s imagination.
?I have not held any meeting with any Chinese; I have not sold that land to any Chinese entity and the place has not been earmarked for sale to any Chinese,? he assured Xinhua, insisting: ?The land is still government?s land.?
Until government and city authorities step in to resolve these lingering matters, Kantamanto traders will continue to lick their wounds over the huge losses they have incurred.
Enditem.
