It is a year since the Accra Metropolitan Assembly launched its city-wide mass clean-up initiative, sending the people of Accra out into the streets, into the gutters, once a month - to take responsibility for the filth we create.
Church, youth and community groups have taken up the baton and there has been some improvement in parts of the city – although this only ever been short-lived, as the quantity of rubbish produced by a city now pushing four million in population simply cannot be controlled by a once-monthly voluntary cleaning operation.
It is true that AMA workers have led the pack – the boss even taking to the ditches himself – in JJ style - to support the exercise and armies of AMA officials, policemen, prison officers, firemen and military men also drafted in for the exercise. It is also true that the AMA has successfully pushed the idea of a joint sense of responsibility for our environment – the first very small step towards seeing their waste disposal by-laws observed.
But the programme itself is still not enough. We've seen it all before, from AFRC through PNDC to NPP, yet the problem is only worsening.
Today, just two days since the last clean-up attempt on Saturday, 'dredged’ gutters are still littered with rubbish – and they have already begun to fill up once again.
The fact is that, with a poor or non-existent waste disposal system, people have no choice but to let their rubbish pile up in gutters beside the road or even the road itself.
They also have no choice but to flaunt the almost unenforceable by-laws on piling our streets with rubbish: if litter is not collected, if bins are overflowing – where else are we supposed to throw our waste? Writing one year ago at the launch of the clean-up scheme, The Statesman welcomed the initiative, but stressed that it must form part of a more comprehensive plan.
We said that our capital needs an entire system of waste collection and waste management, with rubbish being removed as it is produced rather than waiting for it to accumulate and fester, before sending in our children with shovels to haul it out of the overflowing ditches. So far, we have seen little evidence of such a programme.
One year on, we say the scheme has made some positive progress, but also that it has confirmed our fears: a reactive remedy to our waste problem may allow the AMA to further procrastinate on developing a proactive solution. Monthly clean-up exercises must not be seen as a permanent fix to the problem, but rather as an interim measure, whilst the AMA comes up with a system of more regular rubbish collection, and means of preventing the health-threatening build-up of rotting waste.
We await news of such a plan, and call on the media and the public to step up the pressure on the AMA to deliver on this. A more comprehensive approach will be very costly but the revenue-mobilising potential of the AMA, which is estimated to be currently less than 5 percent realised, means it can be afforded.
The Statesman has often called for an end to our system of open gutters – a system which for too long has served as a fertile breeding ground for malaria-spreading mosquitoes.
Rather than clamber in amongst the rotting refuse once a month, we believe it makes much more sense to cover up these health hazards – to prevent the rubbish, and the insects, from gathering there in the first place. Baah-Wiredu may get a fit upon hearing this, but we also know that he’s astute enough to appreciate that the cost of sealing over the major drains in Accra would soon be offset by the amount saved on malaria medication and treatment every year.
Leaving the big drains opened and choked cause floods, which can destroy properties and take lives.
Today, we call for stronger policy on sanitation across Ghana, and most particularly our urban areas. In conjunction with central government, Metropolitan and Municipal Assemblies, including the AMA, must institute new regulations, outlawing the construction of new open drains.
Developers who flaunt the laws should be penalised – and law, unlike so many others, must be rigorously enforced.
The AMA, and assemblies elsewhere, must also devise and publish a strategy for the rapid cover-up of all the drains, within the next five years. The major arteries of the sewage network – the rivers of filth around Nkrumah Circle, Nima, approaching Korle Lagoon, for example, must be the priority, and these should be covered within the next two years.
The others must swiftly follow, and Government must recognise the importance of these measures, the long-term economic sense, and make sufficient provisions to tackle the problem.
No one can deny that the AMA is faced with a tough task: a sprawling city with an escalating population, expanding far faster than anyone can keep up. New urban areas appear on the city’s peripheries, sometimes faster than water or sewerage can follow them, whilst many old ones are a hotch-potch of new developments.
Sanitation and waste disposal for such a colossal amount of people, over such a huge area, is part of its mandate – a complicated task, but one it must work out how to perform, for the health of the nation.
