Activities at one of Ghana’s biggest trading centres; the new Kejetia market, have come to a standstill after the management of the facility disconnected electricity supply to over 7,000 shops on Wednesday.

This comes after weeks of unresolved disagreements between the traders and the management over the payment of electricity bills.

Earlier last week, Management of the New Kejetia Market locked up hundreds of shops in the market following the refusal of the traders to pay their electricity bills and other service charges.

The traders, in retaliation, locked up the offices of the management members.

According to the traders, several complaints to the management of the market to provide each shop with personal meters have been unsuccessful.

“We’ve asked management and the board that for 7,203 shops to get one meter, it is unreasonable,” the chairman of the Federation of Kumasi Traders, Nana Akwasi Prempeh stated in an interview with Citi News.

The failure of the management of the facility to ensure the provision of self-meters forced the leadership of the traders to instruct their members not to pay any bill to the management.

This decision has led to the disconnection of electricity supply to the shops.

The traders are insisting that until each shop is provided with a personal meter, they are not going to pay any bill to the management.

“All the demands that they were making in order to make the contract official, they have the documents in their custody. If before Monday they sign the supplier contract, we the leadership will go round shop to shop and tell our members to go and pay the old bills. And then also, on the outstanding 5 months bills, we will go and sit down with them and then put all the figures together and share among our members,” Nana Akwasi Prempeh added.