Sanitation conditions in Ablekuma North have improved tremendously within the last few months as a result of concerted efforts by the Ablekuma North Municipal Assembly to rid garbage from the streets and de-silt choked gutters.
This feat has been achieved as a result of the arrest and prosecution of sanitation offenders who have the habit of dumping refuse indiscriminately in the municipality.Mr Kofi Ofori, the Municipal Chief Executive (MCE), made this known during an interview with the Ghana News Agency.
He said already five people have been arrested and prosecuted by the courts with one of them getting a jail sentence of two months and the other four getting fines ranging from GHC 350.00 to GHC 360.00 to serve as a deterrent to others in the communities.
In order to prosecute President Akufo-Addo’s vision of making Accra the cleanest city in Africa, Mr Ofori said assembly members from the seven electoral areas in the municipality were each given financial and logistical support to organize and carry out monthly clean-up exercises.
To ensure that each household in the municipality has a toilet facility, he said, the assembly has started identifying houses without toilets and landlords are being urged to register with the assembly in order to benefit from a World Bank/AMA toilet project.
Under the project, the MCE said, landlords are expected to pay 30 per cent of the project cost and the rest would be paid by the funding agency. Mr Ofori said households, lorry stations and shops are expected to get dustbins in order to eliminate the indiscriminate littering of waste on the streets.
One major challenge confronting the assembly, the MCE said, was lack of adequate office space for the staff. He said the assembly has identified some plots of land belonging to government and talks are being held with the illegal occupants to quit for an administrative block complex to be constructed. On NABCO, Mr Ofori said, 233 have been engaged in the municipality with 37 placed at the assembly.
He said the New Patriotic Party (NPP) government under President Nana Akufo-Addo was on course since most of the campaign promises were been fulfilled citing the free SHS, restoration of nurses and teacher training allowances, NABCO, one-village one-dam in the three northern regions and one-district one-factory as examples.
GNA
