Law and order at Kaneshie Market Complex: Eva Maison rises up to task
• Eva likes dressing in national colours
About fortnight ago we highlighted part of the leadership and governance structure of the traders at the Kaneshie Market Complex, which is headed by the Queen, Madam Lydia Naa Kowah Quaye.
This weekend, our attention is on the Secretary to the Queen and the traders at the market, Madam Eva Esi Bentuma Maison.
Popularly known as a trader in children’s clothing, she is a woman of many parts and a paralegal also. For the past seven years Madam Eva Maison together with her team of four other paralegal members has brought and maintained relative peace at the market.
She hails from Saltpond in the Central Region but was born at Agona Ahuntem, a community in the Agona East Constituency.
Madam Maison completed Kaneshie Senior High Technical School in 1978 in Secretarial (short hand and typing) after which she gained admission at the Government Secretarial School, Accra Campus, at Cantonments for further course in secretarial training.
After school, she worked as a private secretary at a construction firm for a year-and-a half before pursuing other interests.
For the past 40 years she has been doing business at the Kaneshie Market Complex and she explained that the genesis of her trade was in the quest to procure baby care items, after giving birth to her first child.
“I realised that I was buying the baby care items at a more expensive amount where I lived than I did from town, so I decided I could purchase in smaller quantities and sell to some mothers I knew,” she said.
Shortly, the business started growing, so she joined the traders at the UTC market, Accra and started selling but after some time she secured a place at the Kaneshie Market Complex.
Madam Maison sells to people from all walks of life and the joy of satisfying her customers keeps her going.
Diverting to her paralegal duties, she said the issues that were brought before her and her team were non-exhaustive, but specific among such cases were gender-based violence, child abuse and child labour.
Such issues, according to Madam Eva, were “not condoned at all, unless our attention is not drawn to them.” She cited a case in which a woman was abused and as a result lost two teeth but got justice, following their intervention.
“We took the matter to the appropriate quarters, the police. Though the victim in this case wanted the case withdrawn for the sake of her children, we ensured that the culprit was made to fix the lost teeth and compensate the victim with GH₵1,000.00,” she recalled.
Madam Maison has been a secretary at the Kaneshie Market Complex for the past 22 years. After her training as a paralegal and women rights activist which was funded by FIDA Ghana she had further training at Tostan Training Centre in Senegal.
These studies, she said, had been instrumental in identifying and helping to end varied forms of injustice reported to them. Advocacy is done through an information centre and a public address system available at the market.
Some of the challenges encountered in her line of duty are that “most women try to endure abuses because they want to save their marriages. That, she noted, was bad because it could result in deformity or even death.
“No one likes divorce, however, it is very wrong for women to endure abuse for the sustainability of the marriage,” she stressed.
She said when the team was overwhelmed by some of the cases; they were referred to the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection for further redress.
All social related issues are handled at their market meetings on Wednesdays but cases of domestic abuse, child marriage, among others, are brought before the paralegal them for resolution.
She receives constant training and is required to submit quarterly report on the cases that have come before them and inform stakeholders on the happenings at the market.
Talking about breast cancer, Madam Maison advised women not to downplay the devastating effect of the disease and further stressed the need for traders to be concerned about their general wellbeing in spite of their daily hustle and bustle.
By Portia Hutton-Mills
