Dr Agnes Adu, has described the state of the Trade Fair Centre, La, when she was appointment CEO of the CEO for the Ghana Trade Fair Ltd (GTFL).

Speaking to Channel One TV, she explained the controversial shakeups her office has undertaken at the establishment, citing dilapidation and delinquency.

Dilapidation

“Over the years, the facility had broken down to an unrecognizable [state] that we really couldn’t function here,” she said. “The dilapidated structures were a danger to the public.”

She accused the previous National Democratic Congress (NDC) government led by President John Mahama of neglecting the facility, the company and its workers.

“The day I walked in, [workers] hadn’t been paid for 18 months. When I took over the site, it was such a broken down place, the company itself, the employees hadn’t been paid in 18 months under the previous government,” she disclosed, emphasising: “There was not one building I could walk in and say this was a place we could do events. It needed urgent rehab.”

“The [New Patriotic Party] government [led by President Nana Akufo-Addo], the board of directors, and myself as CEO quickly came up with a plan to make sure we turned this place around and remodelled it and then turn it into a modern space where we can actually have meaningful events,” Dr Agnes Adu said.

Delinquency

The GTFL boss noted, “The things you saw here when I took over in 2017, did not belong to the company.”

She said there were “maybe only two businesses paying rent” using the facility.

“They had stopped paying rent to the government agency running the place. They were renting the bare space and were in arrears,” she explained.

“They people that were evicted [when] I came – they were all delinquent tenants,” she said, explaining delinquency here meant these were tenants who were notoriously not honouring the agreement between them and the company.

While there were “many” attempts to get them off the property, she regretted they were “not vigorous enough”.

Delay

Dr Agnes Adu said getting the defaulting tenants off the property was the “biggest challenge” to the implementation of the masterplan of the reimagined Ghana Trade Fair Centre.

“It took almost three years going through the courts” and overcoming “resistance,” she emphasised, to explain the delay the project has suffered.

She assured, however, there were no longer any legal hurdles because all appeals and injunctions had “exhausted” themselves.

“What we’re building right now is the exhibition and convention centres,” she added, providing a progress report for a facility she said was comparable to the UK’s O2 Arena, London, and the US’s Jarvis Centre, New York.