Okaikwei North Municipal Assembly prioritizes sanitation management

The Okaikwei North Municipal Assembly, in an effort to contribute its quota to make Accra the cleanest city, has adopted a tough stance to tackle sanitation menace and to promote environmental hygiene in the municipality.

The Assembly, which came into operation about a year now, has set its sight on clamping down on gross environmental misconduct by the inhabitants of the area and had engaged its taskforce to arrest sanitation offenders for prosecution.

Mr Boye Laryea, the Municipal Chief Executive for the area made this known in an interview with the Ghana News Agency after some of the residents had the pleasure to commend the Assembly for the sanitation initiative.

He said since President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo had declared to make Accra the cleanest city, the assemblies must make conscious effort to contribute their quota to the agenda.

Mr Laryea said one of his foremost policy priorities was to have a good sanitation management through education and citizens’ participation while road management would also come to play.

He said by that, the Assembly had put in place weekly cleanup exercise to augment the nationwide monthly sanitation exercise.

“We have plans in place to position litter bins at vantage points in the municipality to curb indiscriminate disposal of refuse in the area,” he said and that the Assembly was signing new contracts with refuse collection service providers who would collect the refuse on time to forestall overflowing of rubbish.

The Chief Executive urged other assemblies to emulate the initiative of the Okaikwei North Municipal Assembly to help bring into fruition the noble objective of making Accra the cleanest.

Mr Laryea said there was no doubt that some of the social contracts with the people have existed for decades and that the Assembly did not have the funds or the capacity to tackle them except to rely on the central government for intervention.

He said the Assembly was compiling data of business structures, which would enable them to generate revenue, and after that, the development agenda would be rolled out.

He called on the residents in the municipality to play their part by paying taxes, be law-abiding and to observe good environmental sanitation to help the Assembly to fulfill its mandate.

Mr Lawyea said since the sanitation initiative, the Assembly’s taskforce had arrested seven people for open defecation at Apenkwa, a suburb of Achimota in the area and they had been made to sign a bond at the Tesano Police Station.