The Accra Metropolitan Assembly is looking to revamp the National Sanitation Day initiative to put the onus of ensuring decent sanitary conditions on residents in the communities.
Speaking on Eyewitness News, the AMA Chief Executive, Mohammed Nii Adjei Sowah, said residents must instead be compelled to deal with their refuse.
“The Assembly’s position is that, we are going to use that platform to enforce our bylaws.”
The next Sanitation Day is this Saturday, on June 3, and Mr. Adjei Sowah said various Assembly personnel will be deployed to ensure that residents comply with sanitation bylaws.
“So on Saturday, we are mobilising all our district and environmental health officials. There are about 160 of them and we will zoom into the Ablekuma Central area and they are going to people’s houses to check whether they have really evacuated all their refuse from the places and disposed them.”
The name “Sanitation Day” will even be a thing of the past in the Accra Metropolis, according to Mr. Adjei Sowah, who added that “we are going to enforce the sanitation bylaws on that day. So I am changing it in my district to Sanitation Enforcement Day.
The AMA MCE was adamant that, the sanitation conditions within the various communities were the responsibility of the residents, and not the AMA.
“I am not excited to come to your community to come and clean up your houses and gutters for you. Once in a while, we will do that; but it is not my responsibility. It is your responsibility,” Mr. Adjei Sowah stated.
Since November 1, 2014, the first Saturday of every month was earmarked as National Sanitation Day across Ghana.
The Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development initiative was declared in response to a major cholera outbreak that year.
On the day, Ghanaians engage in a voluntary clean-up exercise in an effort to reduce unsanitary conditions that breed diseases and causes flooding.
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(Via: CitiFM Online Ghana)
