The concern comes after a fire gutted over 40 shops at the Ashaiman market in Accra on Saturday, September 10. The GNFS attributed the extent of the damage to the difficulty in accessing the affected shops.

In an interview with Citi News, a member of the GNFS public affairs unit, Alex Nartey, expressed concerns over the situation.

“We couldn’t get through to the shops early because people had fortified their shops with huge padlocks and burglar bars. Breaking through was a problem, and the longer it took us to break in, the more the fire was spreading,” Nartey said.

“Our modus operandi is such that when we get to the scene of a fire, we look at how to contain the fire. Because when fighting fires, you don’t just stand at a distance and throw water. You have to identify what we call the seat of the fire and target the fire, and to be able to do that, you need to get into the shops.”

Nartey said the GNFS has been calling on market authorities to provide them with access keys to all the shops in the markets, but this has not been done.

He also called on market traders to be more proactive in fire prevention by clearing all flammable materials from their shops.

The fire at the Ashaiman market is the latest in a series of fires that have occurred in markets in Ghana in recent years.