Citizens responsible for making Accra ‘cleanest city’ – Joyce Aryee

A member of the governing board of One Ghana Movement, Dr. Joyce Aryee, believes citizens are responsible for making the city of Accra the cleanest in Africa.

According to her, citizens have a responsibility to avoid littering and dumping refuse in open spaces to ensure a clean city.

Joyce Aryee in a video for “The Right Way Campaign”, a spin-off from the OneGhana citizen responsibility objective, said the work of garbage-collecting agencies will be easier and effective if citizens make conscious efforts to make the city clean.

“If Accra is going to be the cleanest city [in Africa], it will start with us, the individual citizens, it is us because it is not the garbage collecting agencies that keep the city clean. It is us refusing to litter, it is us deciding to separate our garbage and put them in the right way. It is us deciding to do things the right way. That will be the major boost… then it will make the work of the garbage collectors easier,” she said.

President Akufo-Addo in April 2017 promised to make Accra the cleanest city in Africa by the end of his first term in 2020.

The ambitious plan comes in the face of worsening sanitation crisis in the nation’s capital, Accra, with city authorities struggling to deal with the situation.

Sections of major roads in the capital have been taken over by filth, usually dumped there by residents in nearby areas. The problem reveals an apparent inability of the relevant state agencies to effectively manage waste generated in the capital, especially those generated domestically.

But according to Dr. Joyce Aryee, addressing the sanitation challenge in the country will require concerted efforts of the citizenry, waste collecting agencies and state authorities.

“These are the steps I think [we should follow], First, the citizens, second, those who are charged with collecting and disposing garbage, and third, those who are charged with monitoring and supervising those who do it,” she said.

About the Right Way campaign

The Right Way Campaign is a spin off from the OneGhana citizen responsibility objective.

It is a socio-cultural and behavioural change initiative aimed at impacting and adjusting the attitudes of citizens to seek to do things right and in the interest of Ghana.

It whips the conscience of citizens to do things right by making the idea of doing things right over various themes (e.g. sanitation, meritocracy etc.) top of mind and more socially desirable.

The high awareness and conscientiousness to do things right is expected to yield sub-conscious rewards from revived societal expectations and approval.

The RightWay Campaign will be apolitical in its approach, and will seek to engage with political figures from both sides of the divide, to foster national consensus on the right national values, which will help change the attitudes of the citizenry towards building a better nation.