Commercial buildings including outlets and structures for markets will henceforth only be granted operating permits if they are given the needed clearance from the National Insurance Commission.
According to the Commission, such a move is necessary to reduce to the barest minimum the occurrence of fire outbreaks at commercial centres.
For years, the country has had to deal with loss of human lives, livelihoods and property running into millions of cedis due to occasional fire outbreaks.
The recent one was the destruction of shops and wares running into thousands of Ghana cedis at the Odawna pedestrian shopping centre near the Kwame Nkrumah Interchange in Accra on Wednesday, November 18, 2020.
In an interview with Citi Business News, head of supervision at the National Insurance Commission, Seth Eshun said his outfit is in talks with local authorities across the country to enable them to determine which commercial centres are fit for operation.
“We are in discussions with the local authorities and one of the purposes that we want to achieve with these discussions is to get to a stage where before they give any license for any commercial business, they will check if that building or if that space has insurance, and we believe that if we do this, and we do it especially for our markets it will be a solution. So these are very early discussions and its one of the key things that we seek to do to help protect markets”.
Mr. Eshun further explained that all markets will be mandated to have fire insurance coverage where areas which are deemed safer than others will be less premium than other market places.
“What would happen is that markets that are not very safe would have higher premiums and markets that are safe would have lower premiums and that will be an added advantage to ensure that the markets that are there have the right safety measures”.
