The Accra Metropolitan Assembly says it will begin a massive demolition and decongestion exercise this month to rid the city of wrongly sited buildings and other structures. The Chief Executive Officer of the Assembly, Stanley Nii Adjiri-Blankson says in as much as it is a difficult decision to take, it has to be done to save the city from further trouble as a result of flooding. He was speaking with Kwaku Sakyi Addo, on Joy FM's current affairs programme, Front-Page. “In fact we have on our files now what we call ‘Operation NIMROD’ and it is going to come on very soon. It is going to involve the removal of containers, it is going to involve the demolition of some structures that have been put in waterways, we don’t have a choice…. We were witnesses of the recent floods. We’ve all learnt a lesson now. We don’t want to wait till next year when we have terrible rains then we try to find solutions.” The AMA boss also hinted of plans to relocate some bus terminals situated in the city centre to help reduce the heavy traffic congestion in the city. Nii Adjiri-Blankson said property rates have been reviewed and the assembly has offloaded the responsibility of the collection of property rates to a private company which will begin the collection soon. A Development Planner and Consultant to the National Development Planning Commission, Frank Tackie says the AMA should have done the rights things from the beginning instead of demolishing structures years after they were built. “If the city was planned and we had invested our resources as a nation in the planning process and the AMA planning outfit was well endowed with professionals and the City Engineers Department has the requisite number of trained building inspectors and we understand the value of planning and development control these things wouldn’t have happened. Now if you look at the cost of the houses that are going to be demolished, so why do you wait for somebody to put in all his lifetime investment only to be demolished?”