Gas explosion: High-risk stations must go – Franklin Cudjoe

President of policy think tank, IMANI Ghana, Franklin Cudjoe has backed President Akufo-Addo’s order for the immediate closure of all high risk gas stations across the country following the Atomic Junction explosion.

Seven lives were lost in last Saturday’s incident with over a 100 others suffering injuries.

The President’s directive comes on the heels of a cabinet meeting held Thursday over the explosion.

To successfully carry out the order, a task force is to be deployed within 30 days to assess the risk impact of all gas stations dotted across the country.

Commenting on the development, Cudjoe said Saturday on Accra based Citi FM that: “What I suspect the cabinet’s directive is helping to cure is illegal siting of these businesses which…I am in full support if indeed the cabinet’s directive will be implemented where all these existing gas stations that are illegally sited as in breaking Town and Country Planning Zonal laws…they must go.”

In a related development, a former Minister for Environment, Science and Technology, Mahama Ayariga has challenged cabinet’s directive, especially the one ordering the immediate cessation of the construction of new gas and fuel stations across the country.

According to him, cabinet usurped its authority in issuing those directives.

“The last one which says that the owners or people who already have permits and are in the process of constructing petrol stations and gas stations should cease, those directives are unconstitutional…because people have acquired rights and based on the rights that they have acquired, the president cannot arbitrarily suspend the enjoyments of those rights without regard to due process,” he told Starr News’ parliamentary correspondent Ibrahim Alhassan.

He continued that: “the president has to show that a law empowers him to do that…Cabinet is an advisory body and as an advisory body, you cannot just go and then direct that all constructions across the country should cease. In the constitution, cabinet’s role is to advise the president on policy matters. So the cabinet’s directives cannot take away peoples rights. It is not [in tandem] with our constitution”.