FCTA demolishes shanties in community over COVID-19 protocols violations

The Abuja Metropolitan Management Council (AMMC) has demolished shanties in Kpana, a slum community in Jabi District of the Federal Capital City over violations of COVID-19 safety protocols.

At least 28 people were arrested in Kpana and prosecuted in a mobile court for violating COVID-19 safety protocols, while three restaurants were sealed over a week ago.

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City News observed a bulldozer of the AMMC pulling down shanties at about 3:00pm yesterday as crowds gathered, lamenting their losses.

The structures destroyed were mostly bistros and beer parlours as heaps of chairs, tables, cartoons of assorted beers, refrigerators piled up from one end to the other.

A resident who gave her name as Comfort said the demolition is coming at a tough time for those of them who are running the bistros and beer parlours.

“Life is difficult during this COVID-19 and now we have nowhere to do our businesses. I wonder how we are going to survive the hardship,” she said.

The single mother of four, however, conceded that the residents’ nonchalant attitude towards observing COVID-19 safety regulations was responsible for the demolition of the structures.

She said late evenings up to midnight, fun seekers besiege the community to drink alcohol and eat fish or take pepper soup, at times blocking the road that passes by the village and goes down to Shoprite.

But City News observed that residential buildings were spared.

The Director, Department of  Development Control, Alhaji Mukhtar Galadima, did not pick calls put through to him. He also did not reply to a text message sent to him to comment on the exercise.

But the Chairman of the FCT COVID-19 Enforcement Team, Mr. Ikharo Attah, said Kpana has been a problem throughout his team’s enforcement exercises, saying the team had been to the village several times and they found out that beer parlours operated full hours during the period of the lockdown.