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The Head of the Local Government Service, Nana Ato Arthur has called on the police to ensure that the members of the Anointed Palace Church (APC) who attacked officials of the Tema West Municipal Assembly on Monday are punished.

Speaking on Eyewitness News on Citi FM, Nana Ato Arthur also called for the condemnation of the attack by the general public.

“These are staff of the service doing their lawful work and so people cannot just pounce on them and beat them mercilessly, that is cruel, and we all need to condemn this. And on that note, I would like to ask the Ghana Police Service, especially the Sakumono police who went to rescue our boys, to make sure that the law takes its course to send signals to others that they cannot take the law into their own hands”.

Five members of the Anointed Palace Chapel, a church founded by Francis Antwi, popularly known as Rev. Obofuor, were earlier arrested today, 26th November 2019, after the attack on Monday.

Nana Ato Arthur in a Citi News interview said the five persons and other members of the church pounced on the officials when they visited the Tema branch of the church on a routine exercise to inspect their building permit.

“They got to the Anointed Palace Chapel at about 11:30 am and as a normal practice, the Head of Works requested for their building permit documents, which they failed to produce. The head of works had previously issued four summons to the church but the leadership of the church never showed up,” he said.

According to Nana Ato Arthur, the taskforce was further instructed to write on the Church walls following their failure to produce the permit but the Church members attacked them with sticks and cutlasses when they began to undertake the exercise.

“Just when they moved to carry on, some youth of the church pounced on them and started beating them with sticks, metal strips, cutlasses and smashing the vehicles of the Engineer, the Municipal Finance Officer and the rest of the task force.”

A police complaint was later made by the Assembly to the Sakumono Police Station who took up the matter and arrested five of the culprits.

Nana Ato Arthur said the Local Government Service strongly condemns the action and will not in any way countenance such behaviour by any organization.

“We want to send a strong warning to Anointed Palace Chapel and every organization anywhere in Ghana that what happened yesterday is unlawful and we condemn it in no uncertain terms,” he said.