Cecilia Abena Dapaah, Minister for Sanitation, last Wednesday, told Ghanaians that the promise of Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo to make Accra the cleanest city in Africa is on course, saying the days when the capital city was swallowed by filth are over, following massive work done by her Ministry, in collaboration with the waste management companies.
“Accra is 85% clean; now you don’t see heaps of refuse on the street because we have provided bins across the capital,” Abena Dapaah commented in an interview with Osei Bonsu, host of Asempa FM’s Ekosii Sen programme.
The Sanitation Minister indicated how Accra became very clean during the lockdown in the wake of the Coronavirus pandemic to buttress her point, noting that with a change in human attitude, “the promise to make Accra the cleanest city is doable.”
The Chronicle finds the statement of the Minister intriguing, and dares to ask this simple question currently on the minds of the majority of Ghanaians; “Is Accra 85% Clean?”
The paper wishes to commend Abena Dapaah and operators of the waste management companies in the capital for their efforts to make Accra clean, because the burden they have taken upon themselves is huge and, therefore, must be extolled.
However, it would interest you to note that some parts of Accra, notably the Kaneshie market, Tema Station, London market at James Town, and many other places cannot be declared as being clean due to the heaps of refuse and stinking conditions in those areas.
As the Minister pointed out earlier, if Ghanaians can change their attitude towards littering and the pollution of our environment, not only Accra, but other cities in the country might be drifting towards achieving the tag ‘Clean Cities’.
It is for this reason why The Chronicle is calling on Ghanaians to change their attitude towards our environment, by ensuring that we religiously obey sanitation rules in the country.
For example, some Ghanaians have the habit of gathering refuse in their homes over a period of time, and then cart same into waste bins mounted along our streets for pedestrians to put their litters in, or dump the waste at isolated parts of the city where nobody can see them.
The problem is that in Ghana, as a country, we don’t manage waste, we only collect and dispose of them.
We are, therefore, advising the government to focus its attention on the recycling of our refuse, rather than concentrating its attention on the construction of landfills, as is done in other parts of the world.
Another problem is that any time volunteers embark on clean-up exercises in gutters, the refuse gathered will sit in a pile nearby, and eventually, when the rains come, they will find their way back.
What the current government and others before it have been doing – that is providing litter bins along our streets for people to put their litter in them – is commendable.
Nonetheless, the waste disposal problem doesn’t end there. The question arises, what happens to our refuse once it has been picked up?
In developed countries, once the refuse is picked up, it often goes to landfill, beyond that to recycling centers, waste-to-energy plants, and composters.
We are calling on the government to liaise with the private sector to establish recycling plants across the country, where refuse collected can be recycled to reduce the volume of waste on our streets.
In an article written by Dr. Martin Oteng Ababio of the Department of Geography and Resource Development at the University of Ghana, Legon, he said Accra generates 3,390 tonnes of waste daily, out of which 2,720 tonnes is collected, leaving 678 tonnes.
The statistics above show that the volume of waste generated daily in Ghana might be voluminous, that is why, as a country, we need to find a lasting solution to the problem.
The various Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs) must be made to enforce the sanitation rules and regulations by punishing offenders, especially those who litter our streets indiscriminately.
They must arraign offenders before the law courts and prosecute them, or ask them to pay fines to serve as a deterrent to others.
There have been complaints by members of the general public that the waste management companies, responsible for the lifting of refuse from the various homes, most of the time fail to pick them up on time, thus leading to over-spillage of refuse in their homes.
It is the view of The Chronicle that if the government is able to collaborate with the private sector to establish more recycling plants, the various waste management vehicles would be able to get dumping sites for the waste, and it would reduce the volume on our streets.
The post Editorial : Is Accra 85% clean? appeared first on The Chronicle Online.
Read Full Story
Facebook
Twitter
Pinterest
Instagram
Google+
YouTube
LinkedIn
RSS