…Want Mgt C’ttee Disbanded, Shops Allocated to Only Traders
Ahead of the allocation of lock-up shops at the Mile One Rumuwoji Market, Phase Two, which is about 95% completed, the shop owners have cried out to Governor Nyesom Wike to rescue them from illegal levies and all manner of extortion by the management committee presently in charge of the market.
The shop owners made the demand during a press conference at the NUJ Press Centre, Moscow Road, Port Harcourt.
Chronicling all the unfair treatment against the traders, the Chairman of the Shop Owners Association, Chief Y. O. C. Georgewill, accused the management committee which he said was appointed during the tenure of former Governor Rotimi Amaechi in May 2013 of doing more harm than good.
Besides allegedly disorganizing the structures of the market, the shop owners’ chairman said the committee which duplicates the functions of the trained council staff are basically civil servants whose only interest is to extort huge sums of money from the traders for themselves and do not pay anything into the coffers of the local government council, and at the end of the month are still paid by the council chairman who appointed them.
According o the traders, the Management Committee is a liability, irrelevant, corrupt and of no use, and should therefore be scrapped just like the TIMARIV that was created under a similar circumstance and at the same time under the previous administration.
Other demands by the traders include a car park for the market solely under the watch and control of the traders’ association and independent of the council, an executive bill to the State House of Assembly on the welfare of the traders and which seeks to spell out and articulate the revenues accruing to the market, what goes to the council and what is entitled to the traders’ association respectively to avoid recurring confrontations and multiple litigations as is presently the case due to all these unresolved issues.
Chief Georgewill also lamented the recent demand for payment of one thousand (N1000) on each trader in the market by the council for what they called ‘Record Update’, wondering why a council that has been collecting millions of naira from the traders for all these years will claim not to have a record, and appealed to His Excellency to quickly intervene.
The traders also appealed to the governor to peg the allocation of fees for the lock-up shops not above fifty thousand naira so that the rents will be moderate as well as the stallage fees.
But more importantly, “is the need to consider only authentic traders as the sole beneficiaries of the lock-up shops as against giving them out to politicians and public servants who in turn re-allocate them to others at exorbitant fees which encourages squatting and subsequent illegal fees,” Chief Georgewill noted.
Chief Georgewill also claimed to have comprehensive and up to date records of the Mile One Rumuwoji Market, Phase two including the authentic shop owners and is also willing to oblige the state government or other relevant authorities the records if needed.
According to him, the phase two market has a total of 62 buildings, made up of 1, 637 lock-up shops and 417 open shops.
He put the number of phase one shop owners who missed out as a result of not meeting the government policy over the issue of payment to 16.
Commending Governor Wike for an impressive three and half years in office, the traders pledged their unalloyed support for the governor’s second term in office, calling him the ‘Moses’ of their time.
