The assemblies that govern by ashes
Ghana’s local assemblies has proven very diligent in collecting tolls. What they have selectively become poor at is ensuring the very reason they were instituted is carried out.They watch the hazards multiply and wait for disaster to strike. How many livelihoods must burn before local government takes its duty seriously?
Ghana’s markets are burning, livelihoods are disappearing in smoke, and the institutions mandated to manage our cities continue to look embarrassingly unprepared for a crisis that has been building right before their eyes.
The question is no longer whether Ghana has a market-fire problem. It is why Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies continue to tolerate the dangerous conditions that turn fires into national tragedies. Our markets are overcrowded, poorly planned and increasingly resemble sprawling slums, with wooden structures squeezed into every available space, unsafe electrical connections snaking through stalls and cooking flames burning dangerously close to combustible goods.
These are not conditions that appear overnight. They develop gradually, in public view, under the watch of authorities entrusted with planning, sanitation, development control and public safety. Yet the assemblies repeatedly behave as though each fire is an unexpected misfortune rather than the predictable consequence of years of neglect.
The assemblies must stop hiding behind the flames. They have questions to answer.
The January 2, 2025, inferno at Accra’s Kantamanto Market destroyed thousands of shops and devastated the livelihoods of tens of thousands of traders. In March 2025, a devastating fire at Kumasi’s Adum Market injured nine people. These disasters exposed, once again, the vulnerability of Ghana’s commercial centres and the enormous human cost when fire tears through densely packed trading spaces.
The Ghana News Agency has reported on recurring market fires and identified congestion, blocked access routes, unauthorised electrical connections and inadequate fire-safety arrangements among the factors aggravating the danger. The warnings are neither new nor difficult to understand.
So what exactly are the assemblies waiting for?
How many more market women must lose their entire stock? How many young entrepreneurs must watch years of sacrifice reduced to ashes? How many families must be pushed deeper into poverty before local authorities recognise that managing a market involves far more than allocating spaces and collecting revenue?
If an assembly can find a trader to collect a toll from, it must be able to find the same trader to enforce safety regulations.
There is something fundamentally wrong with a local government system that permits commercial spaces to expand into hazardous settlements, yet appears incapable of imposing order before disaster strikes. The assemblies cannot claim ignorance when wooden shacks, obstructed passages, unsafe connections and makeshift cooking spaces are visible to anyone who walks through these markets.
They cannot supervise commercial activity when it generates revenue and suddenly become powerless when the same activity requires firm regulation.
And they certainly cannot continue to treat fire prevention as somebody else’s responsibility.
The assemblies have allowed disorder to become normal
Walk through many of our markets and the danger is difficult to miss. Wooden kiosks are packed tightly together. Traders extend their stalls into available walkways. Goods spill into access routes. Electrical cables are installed in questionable conditions, while naked flames and gas cylinders may be found dangerously close to materials that can ignite and spread fire rapidly.
Some traders sleep in makeshift wooden structures within market premises. Others remain late into the night, preparing meals as they wait for traffic to ease or finish their day’s business. These people are trying to survive in a difficult economy, but their working and living arrangements can expose them and everyone around them to grave danger.
Where are the assemblies?
Where are the routine inspections? Where are the fire-risk assessments, enforcement notices and corrective measures? Where is the evidence that officials are systematically identifying and eliminating hazards before they become disasters?
It is not enough to say that traders are difficult to control. That is precisely why local government exists: to regulate competing interests, enforce standards and ensure that public spaces do not descend into dangerous disorder.
If traders repeatedly obstruct access routes, the assemblies must enforce the rules. If structures are erected without authorisation, officials must intervene. If market layouts are unsafe, they must be redesigned. If existing regulations are inadequate, the assemblies must work with the relevant authorities to address the gaps.
From one wooden kiosk to an entire settlement
The problem extends beyond established markets. Around lorry stations and commercial centres, a single wooden kiosk may begin as a modest shelter for a stranded traveller or a small business. Gradually, more structures appear. More people settle. Cooking spaces emerge. Electrical connections are installed, sometimes illegally, and sanitation becomes an afterthought.
Before long, an informal settlement has grown around what was once a lone kiosk.
This transformation does not happen invisibly. Structures are erected, materials are transported, businesses begin operating and populations increase. The authorities have opportunities to intervene at every stage. Yet too often, decisive action seems to come only when the situation has become too dangerous, too politically sensitive or too costly to correct.
What are the assemblies doing while these settlements develop? Are their development-control officers inspecting these areas? Are building and trading regulations being enforced consistently? Are utility providers being notified about dangerous connections? Are officials documenting risks and issuing timely orders to correct them?
If the answers are yes, the public deserves evidence of the action taken. If the answers are no, the assemblies must explain why public safety has been sacrificed to administrative indifference.
We must also ask whether officials are applying the law consistently. Traders and ordinary citizens should not be left wondering whether unauthorised structures survive because enforcement is weak, selective or compromised. Any allegation of misconduct must be investigated, but the assemblies cannot escape scrutiny simply because no individual official has yet been found responsible.
The Fire Service cannot compensate for failed governance
Whenever a market burns, attention naturally turns to firefighters: how quickly they arrived, whether they had sufficient water and whether they could reach the affected area. These are legitimate questions. The Ghana National Fire Service must have the equipment, personnel, water access and operational support needed to respond effectively.
But firefighting is the last line of defence, not a substitute for competent urban management.
The Fire Service cannot single-handedly clear unauthorised structures, redesign congested markets, provide toilets, regulate development or repair dangerous electrical installations. It cannot undo years of poor planning in the few minutes between receiving an emergency call and arriving at a burning market.
The assemblies must therefore stop shifting the burden of prevention onto the institution responsible for fighting the fire.
Their responsibility begins long before the sirens sound. It begins when an unsafe structure is erected, when a passage is obstructed, when a dangerous connection is ignored and when a market is allowed to expand without adequate infrastructure.
An assembly that repeatedly permits known fire hazards to remain unaddressed cannot credibly claim that the resulting danger is beyond its control.
Survival cannot become a licence for recklessness
Traders and members of the public must also confront their own complicity. The economic pressures are real. Many traders operate on thin margins, struggle with transport costs and lack affordable alternatives. Some sleep near their goods because protecting their stock is essential to their survival.
Their circumstances deserve empathy. But sympathy cannot mean accepting practices that put entire markets and businesses at risk.
Illegal electrical connections, unsafe cooking arrangements, careless handling of gas cylinders and the obstruction of emergency routes cannot be defended indefinitely in the name of making a living. Market associations, shop owners and traders must cooperate with safety inspections, comply with fire precautions and challenge dangerous practices within their communities.
The public must also stop treating disorder as an unavoidable feature of Ghanaian life. We cannot demand accountability from government while refusing to observe basic safety rules ourselves.
However, responsibility must not be used to create a false equivalence. Individual misconduct does not erase institutional duty. Where thousands of people trade in a space that lacks proper access, sanitation, safe electrical infrastructure and adequate fire precautions, the assemblies have a responsibility to organise that space and enforce the standards that protect everyone.
Enough condolences. We need consequences.
Ghana has become too familiar with the aftermath of disaster. Devastated traders, emotional interviews, visits by public officials, expressions of sympathy and promises to rebuild. These gestures may provide temporary comfort, but they do not answer the most important question: what will prevent the next fire?
We need a national fire-risk audit covering markets, lorry stations and densely populated commercial settlements. Every assembly should identify hazardous structures, inspect electrical installations, keep emergency routes clear, enforce restrictions on unsafe cooking and gas storage, and ensure that fire extinguishers, hydrants and other safety facilities are accessible and functional.
Market redevelopment must incorporate safe electrical systems, proper drainage, adequate sanitation, emergency access and designated cooking areas. Assemblies must publish their findings, identify the corrective actions required and report progress publicly.
We should not wait for another inferno to discover that a market is congested, that an access route is blocked or that an electrical installation is dangerous. Those are precisely the hazards authorities are expected to identify before lives and livelihoods are lost.
Ghana’s ambitions for development and urban progress ring hollow when traders must conduct business in environments where basic safety cannot be guaranteed. A country’s development is not measured only by its roads, towers and impressive buildings. It is also measured by how it protects the people who work in its markets, sustain its households and keep its economy moving.
The next market fire may begin with a single spark. The failure that allows it to become a catastrophe begins much earlier in offices where warnings go unheeded, regulations go unenforced and public responsibility is treated as an inconvenience.
By Hannah Agyemang
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