Sunyani to prosecute sanitation offenders

Sunyani, March 18, GNA - Mr. Simon Opoku, Sunyani Municipal Environmental Health Officer, on Wednesday said residents who would flout sanitation laws in the municipality would be prosecuted. He said this when he briefed newsmen about the visit of a three-member transitional task force team on waste management and sanitation to assess the sanitation situation in the region. The team has already been to Goaso, Techiman and Dormaa Ahenkro and will proceed to Berekum and Techiman.

Mr. Opoku said his office had started prosecuting persons who littered the streets indiscriminately or did not ensure proper sanitation management in their homes.


He said five persons were arraigned before a magistrate court in Sunyani last week and were fined 72 Ghana cedes each to serve as deterrent to others.


Mr Opoku said sanitation management was a great worry to the assembly and promised that every thing possible would be done to bring the situation under control.

Mr. Evans Gyamfi Ameyaw, Municipal Coordinating Director, said the public needed a change of attitude to ensure that President John Atta Mills' vision of total cleanliness in the country would be achieved. He expressed concern that "after cleaning an area people go back within some few minutes to litter again, making the place look untidy" and added that the assembly had plans to organise a clean-up exercise every month to maintain cleanliness in the municipality. "The assembly has identified heaps of waste that have been in the municipality for years and they will soon be removed to farming sites as manure."


Mr. Adu Boadi Acheampong, co-chairman of the task force on waste management and sanitation, said the team was in the region to assess the sanitation situation after the recent nation-wide cleanup exercises as part of the President's vision to reduce filth in the country within his first 100 days in office.


Sanitation management needs a lot of money, he said, and urged the public to support in clearing waste in the communities. Mr. Acheampong said the team observed during the tour that the assemblies used half of their internally generated revenue in the management of waste. 18 March 09