The Member of Parliament (MP) for Kwadaso, Dr Owusu Afriyie, has accused the government of gross incompetence in its handling of decongesting the city. He said the whole exercise has been haphazardly handled. Dr Afriyie was speaking on Metro TV’s Good Morning Ghana on Tuesday in reaction to media reports indicating that the President had directed the Accra Metropolitan Assembly Boss to halt all demolishing exercises. AMA task forces, led by Mayor Dr. Alfred Vanderpuije, have been embarking on a massive demolition exercise in various parts of Accra for some months now. They have destroyed shops and driven people away from all over the city of Accra, particularly Kantamanto Market through Kwame Nkrumah Circle and Kaneshie to Odorkor in a bid to rid the national capital of hawkers and traders along the business district of the city. The AMA teams descend on stalls of street traders, under the cover of darkness without warning, and proceed to destroy them, though many of such stalls contain valuable merchandise ready for sale. But as the Tuesday edition of the Daily Graphic reports, government has indicated that although it is not backing the indiscriminate citing of unauthorized structures, the exercise has to be carried out in line with the total urban renewal project promised in the National Democratic Congress (NDC) manifesto. In view of this, Dr Owusu Afriyie noted that government’s intervention is “an admission of the fact that the whole thing has been haphazardly done without referring to any kind of framework to monitor and evaluate the impact of the exercise.” He accused the AMA for undertaking the decongestion exercise in what he termed "a 'machoistic' way of doing things without any reference to the sufferings of the poor people who find themselves in urban areas and cannot find a place to live but have to survive in the streets.” By: Dorcas Efe Mensah/Myjoyonline.com/Ghana