Dozens of heavily armed policemen and Taskforce of the Tema Development Corporation (TDC) early Friday morning stormed the Kaizer Flats in Tema Community 4 and forcefully evicted the residents.
The residents most of whom were still in bed when the team arrived had all their properties including their electronic appliances and furniture thrown out of their building into the open.
Owners of the Kaizer Flat which is the TDC, secured a court order to flush out the residents who they described as squatters on the basis that the building was terribly weak and posed a great danger to its occupants.
A resident who claims he was born and bred in the flats over 50 years ago in an interview with Kasapa FM, explained that the action by the TDC came as a shock to them as there was no notice of eviction.
According to him, the court last year directed the TDC to evict the residents after a year which falls on 22 September 2017, and wonders why the TDC has sprung such surprise on them throwing them out of their houses mercilessly.
In May 2017, the Minister of Works and Housing, Mr Samuel Atta Akyea, directed the Tema Development Corporation (TDC) to clear illegal occupants from some of the structures at the Kaiser flats in Tema.
According to him, move is to make way for the company to pull down those structures and rebuild them to meet the country’s housing deficit.
The illegal occupants of the flats at Tema Community Four had sought court action to restrain the TDC from ejecting them, but after two years of litigation, the High Court and Court of Appeal ruled in favour of the latter.
Even though the ruling was given in November 2016, requiring the squatters to vacate the flats, they have remained adamant to calls by the TDC to do so.
The development has stalled efforts by the company to carry out its mandate to renovate the 30 flats, four of which have been declared dangerous for occupation by the court.
Hon. Atta Akyea, who was on an inspection tour of some Affordable Housing projects at various sites in Tema last Tuesday, asked the TDC to use due process to get the squatters out, as a matter of necessity.
“If the flats are unsafe for occupation and the people want to risk their lives, government will flush them out.
“I have given TDC the backing to take steps to deal with them as we are doing to ‘galamsey’ people because if you are a squatter, it means that you have no business derailing the development process,” he said.
