‘Why must we lock rubbish bins in Ghana’ - Sad Osafo-Maafo asks

The Senior Minister, Nana Yaw Osafo Marfo, has questioned the necessity in putting dustbins in locks as being done by the Accra Metropolitan Assembly to protect bins placed at vantage points across the city from getting stolen.

“I was just walking around and I discovered that they (the AMA) have introduced some dustbins.

And they’ve bolted this with a lock and put it on a concrete block and surrounded it such that nobody can remove them. Is this necessary.” He worriedly asked.

He wondered why such extreme measures were needed in protecting dustbins considering the cost involved.

“The cost of putting a dustbin is far more than the dustbin itself. Yes, that is the lock, the concrete, the metal belt, and everything, is far more than the dustbin.” He said.

The minister who attributed the cause of the situation to the mindset of the Ghanaian population said, “Elsewhere in the world these things are put at vantage points and nobody will attempt to take it to their house to put water in it. But here in Ghana if you leave them out unprotected, people will remove them to their houses for their personal use.”

The senior Minister said that the necessity to check sanitation issues makes the provision of dustbins and other effective measures imperative, and therefore called for a change of mindset among Ghanaians.

“So because of the mindset of our own people we’ve got to this extent to protect a dustbin. We are worried about sanitation and if we don’t provide containers for the rubbish there will be problems.

Now AMA has to go to this extent to provide these and when I saw it I felt very sad. This is a mindset problem and we should move away from this, it is not helping development” He said.

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