The Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA) on Saturday locked more than 20 shops in the Central Business District (CBD) for allegedly defying the National Sanitation Day (NSD) directive by opening to trade during the April clean-up exercise.

The Mayor of Accra, Hon. Michael Kpakpo Allotey who ordered the closure during an inspection tour of the exercise, criticised the traders and shop operators for violating the rules despite prior public announcements and extensive engagement ahead of the event.

Speaking to the media, the Mayor said the Assembly had originally intended to hold the clean-up on the previous Saturday, but rescheduled it after market women pleaded that, because of the Easter period, the exercise should be pushed forward by a week.

He said the Assembly accepted the request in what he described as a demonstration of a listening administration and subsequently announced the new date in a press release through various communication channels, including radio, television and other forms of public notice.

The Mayor, pointed out that he had no knowledge of any arrangement to allow shop owners to open their shops and insisted that neither the Minister for Local Government, Chieftaincy and Religious Affairs nor the Regional Minister had informed him of any agreement permitting traders to operate during the sanitation exercise.

He stated that the NSD was a government-backed directive that required compliance and could not be set aside through private arrangements or unauthorised payments, adding that the Assembly’s duty was to announce, enforce the exercise and not to negotiate separately with private property managers over whether traders should obey the directive.

He indicated that persons found to have opened their shops in defiance of the order would be summoned and processed for possible prosecution before the sanitation court.

He said the Assembly had been lenient in the previous year, focusing more on education and sensitisation, but had now entered a phase of strict enforcement where offenders would be made to face the law.

The Mayor warned that the Assembly would seize goods and enforce sanctions against persons who refused to comply, noting that anyone advising traders to begin selling before the authorised time was misleading them.

He said several persons had already been arrested and would be taken to the sanitation court to be fined, adding that although he was not pleased to see elderly women and petty traders dragged before the court, the law had to take its course.

The Mayor appealed to traders to support the Assembly’s work by obeying directives aimed at keeping the city clean, stressing that Accra belonged to all residents and that failure to uphold sanitation rules would ultimately affect everyone.