There is a brisk sale of burnt canned foods in the Ashanti regional capital town of Kumasi of salvaged from fire-ravaged wholesale shops.
Traders, head porters especially, have thronged the famous Adum PZ building to do “serious scavenging”, Luv FM’s Nana Yaa Gyimah has reported.
The damaged foods are being sold at cut-down prices with no regard to the health risk they pose to consumers. Some have also collected the foods and items for their personal use.
“It is not consumable”, the Ashanti Regional Manager of the National Disaster Management Organisation (NADMO), Kwabena Nsenkyire offered his ignored warnings to the journalist.
The willing sellers of the burnt foods, however, have buyers.
Boxes of food ingredients, iodised salt, tomato paste, cartoons of tin milk, sardines, Milo, cooking oil, Nestle products, Cadbury, PZ Cussons products and anything sold in provision shops are being scavenged.
Not even the presence of security has been able to douse the commercial interest arising out of the ashes of the building now a pale shadow of itself and a pile of billowing smoke.
“We have cordoned this place, we tell them don’t come, but they keep on coming. We tell them don’t park but they keep on parking”, the frustrated official said.
According to the journalist, traders and hawkers storm the site early morning and late evening when security around the building is relaxed.
“The challenge is big”, he said resignedly.
And so from the Central Business District in Kumasi to Adum and Dr. Mensa, wretched labels of these foods from Sunday’s wreckage are hawked around the streets and arranged around shops albeit discretely.
One shop’s burnt food is another hawker’s hot cake.
Source: Myjoyonline.com
