Abuja city
By Adedayo Akinwale
Abuja Market Management Limited (AMML) has said preparations are in top gear to liaise with the Federal Capital Territory Administration (FCTA) to providing Close Circuit Television (CCTV) cameras at Garki Model Market.
The General Manager, AMML, Alhaji Abubakar Usman Farouk, who was represented by the Assistant General Manger, Corporate Service, Mr. Zachariah Alaku, disclosed this in Abuja during a recent meeting with Garki Model Market stakeholders.
“Considering the cost of CCTV cameras, we are liaising with FCTA to provide cameras in the market the monitoring of events and happening in the market”, he said.
Sequence to this, “mini fire station will be set up, coupled with the installation of fire extinguishers in the market as a standard obtained all over, to forestall any case of fire incident”, he added.
Abubakar noted that AMML would work out modalities with shop owners to provide central generator that would service the market to make it more attractive “even to foreigners, as the kind of noise you hear anytime there is power outage is too much.”
Consequently plans are underway to carryout verification exercise to ascertain the owners of the shops in the market and also to acquire prepaid metres, he disclosed and urged whoever engages their services to pay his/her bill as at when due.
Lamenting some of the challenges, he said the evacuation of waste and provision of security in the market was costly, as some shop owners were not cooperating in paying their dues, adding that, “there is limit that we can subsidise the service, as we are not ready to provide second hand service.”
Special Adviser to FCT Minister on Investment, Hajia Nafisat Nuhu, said the meeting was to have first-hand information from the owners of the shop and the traders operating in the market, to have the idea of what their problems and to know how to solve them.
“As there are 894 locked up shops and 2000 informal shops, plans are under way to eliminate middlemen in the allocation of shops to the primary users, because FCT will not condone roadside trading”, she said.