Tema, Aug. 27, GNA – Some industries operating in Tema Metropolis have called on the government, relevant ministries, and the Tema Metropolitan Assembly (TMA) to address scores of business challenges they face to enable them to operate smoothly and efficiently.
If these challenges were addressed, the business community would be in a better position to support the TMA and the government to address some developmental challenges in the communities they operated in.
The industry players made up of chief executive officers and managers of industries such as Tropical Cables, Tex Style Ghana Limited, Wilmar Ghana, and Chemico Limited among others outlines their challenges during an open forum when the TMA held its maiden ‘Tema Mayor Ball’ to woo industries to support its vision to ‘Make Tema Shine Again’.
Mr Yohane Amarh Ashitey, the TMA Chief Executive Officer and other dignitaries at the forum appealed to the industry players to support the Assembly to achieve its aim of lifting the city.
The TMA Chief Executive Officer had underlined six thematic areas namely: education, sanitation, health, tourism, environment, and security.
However, the captains of industry urged the Assembly not to only think about changing the physical things in the metropolis but must also reorient and retrain its staff to have a change of attitude to support the vision.
“I hope with this vision, the staff will also change their behaviour, they behave like they are doing us a favour, the way they receive us to make us feel like the Assembly is not serious to do business with,” an industry player stated.
Others also bemoaned the deplorable road infrastructure in the area, especially in the industrial area, which they said led to the frequent breakdown of their trucks, and vehicles, which translates into more monies being spent for repairs.
While commended the MCE for the vision to transform Tema, they urged him to have a plan to sustain the programme, have Key Performance Indicators (KPI), and prioritized the developmental needs for coordinated implementation.
Mr Ashitey, responding to their concerns, said the assembly was already addressing the staff attitude issues and gave the assurance that their clients would very soon see the difference.
He added that they would be deploying technology to cut down on the human interface, saying a call centre, which would have a recording feature would also be put in place to enable clients to contact the Assembly without having to be at its premises physically.
He also said the Assembly was also at the planning stage to roll out an online permit application to enable applicants to apply and upload all the necessary documents for the permit to be granted, and payment made at the bank, adding that this would mean an applicant would only visit the Assembly to collect the permit.
Touching on fees being collected from wooden and container structures, he explained that the Assembly has two permits for such structures depending on whether they were temporal or permanent structures.
The MCE said with the temporal structures, owners were allowed to operate temporally and required to vacate the place whenever the need be adding that no fees or rates were collected from the illegal structure.
According to him, the Assembly was supposed to promptly remove such illegal structures but the cost involved in hiring cranes and other equipment to carry such structures off was a great challenge, and, therefore, appealed to organizations with such machines to support the TMA with them to clear the business areas of squatters.
Answering questions on how he intended to achieve the long list of projects by the end of his term, he stated that the projects, were not entirely new, stating for instance that school and health institutions renovations could be done by the industries adopting the needy ones, adding that the Assembly was not interested in receiving cash from the companies but rather having the companies executing the projects for them.
