The Kumasi Metropolitan Assembly is expected to begin its planned decongestion exercise tonight. Officials say the exercise will take place between 9pm today and 2am Tuesday morning. The KMA had given a 15th January deadline for hawkers to leave the main business district of Adom and other parts of the city. But two months after the expiration of the deadline the assembly has come under intense criticism for failing to drive the hawkers out of the streets. Officials of the KMA have been meeting to strategize the exercise. The KMA states that the exercise will last for three days. It has promised that each morning a monitoring team made up of the police, military and the metropolitan guards would patrol the areas to prevent the hawkers from returning. The city officials say after the exercise they would deal ruthlessly with any hawker who would flout the law this time.