Hawkers doing business at the new Kejetia terminal want answers from the Kumasi Metropolitan Assembly (KMA) as to why it has unleashed soldiers from their respective barracks to brutalise them.

Their worry is that the soldiers have adopted the habit of whipping them and ceasing their stuff but allow some women they described as their “girlfriends” to stand at unauthorized spots to sell their wares without being questioned.

The worrying development begun after the opening of the roads around the redeveloped Kajetia Bus Terminal appears to have been institutionalized by the Mayor, Hon Osei Assibey Antwi who deployed them.

The wild security, mostly soldiers and some police officers maintaining law and order and ensuring the free of flow of traffic in the business area have resorted to brute force by the use of copper wires to whip offenders.

Offending taxi drivers who fall foul to the measures put in place by the security personnel are made to lie bareback on the bonnets of their vehicles while the soldiers whip them with twined copper wires.

On Tuesday morning, a soldier with a service name, “Ampiah”, gave a taxi driver the whipping of his life for stopping in front of the Bantamahene’s Palace to pick a passenger, bruising his back in the process.

The hawkers, mostly women are thereby calling on the KMA to withdraw the military into their barracks over the unexpected brutalities being melted out on them, with some vowing to vote against the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) in 2020 if the trend is not stopped immediately.

The KMA has remained tight-lipped over this glaring infringement on the rights of ordinary citizens, as, Hon Osei Assibey Antwi has declined several calls by the media to at least state his side of the story.