Thirty in court for sanitation offences in Assin South

The Assin South District Assembly (ASDA), has arrested 30 people for various sanitation infractions as part of efforts to rid the District of filth.

Six of them were arraigned before the District Court on Wednesday and were either cautioned or fined between GH¢200.00 and GHC350.00 but the others will appear in Court on Wednesday, October 16.

Mr Eric Pizzas Mensah, District Environmental Health Officer, who confirmed the arrests, told the Ghana News Agency (GNA) that the people were from the Assembly's Zonal Councils in Nsuta, Achiase, Darmang, and Nyankomasi.

He warned that the Assembly would prosecute all persons caught littering regardless of their social standings or political affiliation and appealed to leaders in the communities not to plead on behalf of people arrested for sanitation offences.

The Assembly would continue to work with all stakeholders to provide the needed logistics and dustbins would be placed at vantage points along the streets, market and the lorry stations to ensure easy access.

Mr Mensah said if all the people would be law-abiding and be conscious about the environment, there would be no need to meet once a month to clean the environment.

He appealed to the Assembly members, chiefs and opinion leaders to educate residents to desist from indiscriminate dumping of refuse, disposal of solid and liquid waste, particularly on the roadside and in gutters to maintain clean environment.

Clean environment, according to him, was a shared responsibility and there was the urgent need to change attitudes for the President's vision of making Ghana clean to become a reality.

Mr. Mensah announced plans by the Assembly to scale up public education to create more awareness on sanitation, towards sustaining a clean district.

The Assembly in collaboration with the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), through the Community-Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) programme was embarking on a campaign to stop open defecation and encourage the use of toilet and handwashing facilities in all homes.

The District Environmental Health Officer reiterated the Assembly's commitment to deny developers permit if their building plans had no toilets in the plans because households without toilets resort to open defecation.

"The situation is getting worse day by day, hence, the need to ensure that new buildings had toilets and old ones given time to construct some," he said.