Gov’t urged to support MMDA’s to evacuate refuse

The Government has been urged to support Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDA’s) to evacuate refuse in their areas on daily basis.

The call was made by the Chairman of the Ashiedu Keteke Sub-Metro of the Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA), Mr Daniel Nii Okai in an interview with Ghana News Agency in Accra on Monday.

He noted that until MMDA’s have been resourced to handle all refuse created in their area on a daily basis “the problem environmental sanitation would keep on hunting us”.

The Ashiedu Keteke Sub-Metro Chairman pointed out that AMA is to evacuate about 75 per cent of the refuse created daily leaving a back log of about a quarter is not the best.

Nii Okai noted that even though the National Sanitation Days instituted by the Ministry of Local Government to rid the various communities of filth and in sanitary conditions is in the right direction, the problem of sanitation must be handled in a holistic manner.

He said intensive public education is necessary to make proper environmental sanitation a way of life of the people.

He said: “With such an attitude people would not litter indiscriminately and would maintain clean and healthy surroundings to promote good health at all times.”

Nii Okai said environmental sanitation and hygiene should be made an important aspect of the country’s educational system to inculcate the good habit in school children at an early age to instill the good habit in them.