At least one hundred stores in West Africa biggest and largest open-market, Kumasi Central Market (KCM), were razed down in the early hours of Wednesday, making the need for redevelopment more urgent, authorities have said.

“Everybody who visits the Kumasi Central Market will confirm that there is a need for redevelopment,” Godwin Nyame, the Public Relations Officer (PRO) of the Kumasi Metropolitan Assembly (KMA) said, adding that most of the structures ravaged in the inferno were illegally erected.

He warned that worse disasters could befall the market if the Assembly does not act in time.

A contractor from Brazil has already have expressed interest in reconstructing the market.

Before the inferno, Nyame said a message has been sent through the market manager that all illegal structures be removed.

The fire, which started began about 1:30 a.m., could not be controlled by the Ghana National Fire service because they couldn’t gain access to the market due to the haphazard nature of portions of the Kumasi Central Market.

Authorities said more than 500 traders lost their sources of livelihood when an inferno engulfed sections of the Kumasi Central Market early Wednesday where goods and property worth millions of Cedis were wrecked.

While the fire-fighters believed that it was too early to pinpoint the cause of the fire, some of the traders attributed the disaster to the bad electrical wiring at the market.

KCM has witnessed five fire disasters in three years. About 30 shops were destroyed in a similar fire incident at the market in June last year.

Series of fire incident in Accra, Takoradi, Tamale and Kumasi, had forced the government to organise a committee to see to the cause of the accident.

President John Mahama had even brought in US experts to ascertain the cause of the fire incidence at the Kumasi Central Market but the results of the research were inconclusive because people had gone to the site to destroy evidence before the experts arrived.