Sanitation: All governments have failed; be patient – Accra mayor

All successive governments from Ghana’s first President, Dr Kwame Nkrumah, have failed to provide the necessary infrastructure to make Accra clean, Mohammed Adjei Sowah, the mayor of Accra, has said.

According to Mr Sowah, although all the governments have attempted to make the capital city clean, the efforts were only cosmetic and did not actually yield any benefit due to the lack of infrastructure.

He noted that without the right infrastructure in place, no amount of effort to keep the capital city clean will materialise.

The mayor, however, indicated that President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has directed all the assemblies to focus on providing the needed infrastructure to deal with waste.

Speaking on the Ghana Yensom show on Accra100.5FM hosted by Kwabena Prah Jnr (The Don) on Monday, 8 April 2019, Mr Sowah said: “I was driving in town when the rains started yesterday. I was in town the whole of the evening and we also went round after the rain."

“We had issues with infrastructure. All governments from Kwame Nkrumah have attempted to make Accra clean one way or the other. Some declared 100 days, some went into the gutters in an attempt to show that the city could be cleaned."

“But all successive governments have failed in the provision of infrastructure. If the infrastructure is not there, it will be difficult for you to arrest the problem."

“For instance, if you are doing waste management, where are your transfer stations? How is your landfill site? Do you have the equipment to be able to collect the waste?"

“If you don’t have these things, no matter the cosmetics – declaring 100-day cleaning exercise – you will be exposed tomorrow."

“Some of the drains that were built since the 1960s had not been reconstructed, so, these are some of the things the current president, Nana Akufo-Addo, is directing us to focus on. Providing these things take a bit of time and, so, we are appealing to the people of Accra to be patient with us.”