Metro Chief Promises to Restore Garden City

The newly appointed Metropolitan Chief Executive of Kumasi, Mr. Maxwell Kofi Dwumah alias Kofi Ghana, has said that he will implement an aggressive sanitation programme to restore the city to its former glory and make it one of the best cities in the country.

Speaking in an interview with The Accra Mail in Kumasi over the weekend, Mr. Dwumah, who is an accomplished administrator and a town planner, said that they would work very fast for next six months to put the city in good shape to look clean once again and for people to see major changes in that area.

The Mayor noted that community hygiene was lacking in Kumasi, adding, "It is not the fault of the people but rather due to lack of leadership in terms of how to direct the community's behaviour to deal with hygiene.

"What we need to do is to launch an education campaign and provide all the requisite resources to facilitate community hygiene."

He said hygiene would be a priority of his administration adding that residents of Kumasi were lucky that the city did not experience an outbreak of cholera or typhoid fever all the time that it was in dirt, but that does not mean they should compromise.

The Mayor disclosed that a traffic department would be set up to plan and manage traffic in the city. That, he said, would improve the flow of traffic and reduce the hours lost in traffic holdups in the city.

Commenting on his plans to put markets in the city in a good shape, Mr. Dwumah said that he was not happy about the state in which the markets were. "We are going to decongest and transform some of the markets into permanent structures and provide all the amenities including water, electricity, and toilets for them to fit the status of a business environment."

Speaking later at a get-together to introduce him to senior politicians and elders of the city, the metro chief said that considering the past experiences of the residents, his administration would work hard and pull down all unauthorised structures to give Kumasi a good look.

"Where things have reached we have to destroy in order to re-build and it must be a collective decision to implement such a laudable programme," he said.