Accra residents to pay for garbage disposal

Accra, July 29, GNA - Mr. Stanley Nii Adjiri Blankson, Chief Executive of the Accra Metropolitan Assembly, on Saturday announced that residents in the metropolis would from August 1, 2006 start paying for the disposal of their garbage.

"There is the need for Ghanaians to come to terms that they must pay for the garbage that they create," he said on his rounds across the capital during AMA's Fourth clean-up exercise in Accra. He said modalities for the terms of payment would come out very soon, adding that those in deprived communities would not pay the same amount as their counterparts in well-endowed areas.

Nii Adjiri said AMA, as part of enforcing its by-laws, would institute a spot fine to ensure that people caught dumping refuse in unauthorized places would be penalized.

He said the AMA would engage the services 1,200 people to monitor the various containers placed at vantage points in the communities. Nii Adjiri expressed the hope that AMA would be able to generate enough revenue through the garbage collection and the spot fines to pay refuse contractors.

When the Mayor, accompanied by the Chief Fire Officer, Mr Felix Kwame Felker and other officials from the AMA got to the Salaga Market at 0920, the residents could be seen de-silting the gutters while others collected the garbage into the refuse containers. Some officers of the Ghana National Fire Service were at hand to flush the de-silted drains.

The situation was different when the clean-up monitoring team got to Bukom, near Sakumo We as some residents have structures close to the streets causing both vehicular and human traffic build-up. The AMA boss who was not happy with the situation asked the people to remove their structures from the streets warning, "if by next Saturday these structures have not been cleared from this place, I will bring a task force to come and remove them myself".

When the team got to Abossey Okai Spare Parts Area by 1030 hours, the shops were still closed and people were seen de-silting the drains and cleaning the area.

Nii Adjiri expressed delight for their massive support for the exercise and asked them to sustain the programme in the area. The story was not different in Bubuashie, Kaneshie, Darkuman and New Fadama where the people had cleaned their areas. 29 July 06