NJMA embarks on 'Keep Your City Clean' campaign on March 11

Koforidua, March 5, GNA - The New Juaben Municipal Assembly (NJMA) has announced measures aimed at engaging residents of Koforidua in a partnership to rid the Municipality of fifth and help trim down the Assembly's sanitation bill of 129 million cedis every month. Out-dooring the 'Keep Your City Clean' campaign, which begins on March 11, 2006 and every three months thereafter, the Municipal Chief Executive (MCE), Nana Akwasi Adjei Boateng said the effort was aimed at roping in the public to assist in keeping the environment clean to promote health.

He told Journalists at a news conference on Friday that the campaign would seek to engage the entire residents of the municipality in an "attempt to give practical meaning to sanitation and environmental cleanliness, as a collective communal responsibility." Nana Adjei Boateng said it was becoming increasingly clear that the NJMA alone could not manage the huge tons of solid and liquid waste being generated in the municipality, especially against the backdrop of the equally huge cost in disposing off the waste. He said despite the huge expenditures, the NJMA had failed to make any significant headway towards ridding the municipality of filth and blamed such state of affairs on an erroneous public notion that waste collection and disposal was the sole responsibility of the assembly.

The 'Keep Your City Clean' campaign therefore has the prime objective of re-defining sanitation and environmental cleanliness as a civic communal responsibility, which would be repeated on the last Saturday preceding the Akwasidae festivities. Nana Adjei Boateng said on such days, shops and businesses in the municipality would remain closed until around 1100 hours to be supplemented with public education segments on regular basis and asked the public to support this effort. 5 March 06