Maintaining a clean environment
News of the outbreak of cholera has been received with mixed feelings by residents of Accra and other places where the disease has become a perennial trend.
Cholera, like any other disease, can be prevented if the people adopt lifestyles that do not provide fertile grounds for the deadly but preventable disease to spread.
It is a seasonal disease and becomes near epidemic during the rainy season.
This year, the rains have been very good in southern Ghana, including Accra, but the metropolitan, municipal and district assemblies have not been able to cope with the volume of refuse generated by residents.
The situation has been very bad this year because of the closure of the Abokobi dump site and the challenges facing the Accra Waste and Compost Plant at Adjin Kotoku, near Accra.
It appears there is a challenge facing refuse collection because the service providers do not have sites to dump the refuse.
The filthy surroundings are further exacerbated by the activities of small-scale service providers, otherwise called ‘kaya bola’, who charge residents for collecting their refuse but have no place to dump it.
We must, however, commend the preparedness of the private sector to partner the district assemblies to manage refuse in the country.
In fact, it is a practical demonstration of getting the polluter to pay for the refuse he or she generates by ensuring that the service providers get to the doorstep of the people.
We have come a long way in improving the way refuse is collected and managed in the country.
But sometimes, the lack of funds to pay refuse contractors negates efforts by the companies to maintain clean surroundings and environment.
Growing urbanisation and large populations have stretched national resources beyond the limit, for which reason state institutions are not able to cater for the needs of society.
It is for this reason that we enjoin all Ghanaians to live the adage, “Prevention is better than cure”, by changing their attitude towards the environment.
Sometimes it is nauseating to see a deterioration of the environment, even in our cities, as our compatriots no longer care about personal hygiene and are prepared to litter the surroundings, including even the frontage of their homes.
It is difficult to understand why we have failed to raise our voices against the failure of city authorities to enforce their own bye-laws.
We are happy that Vice-President Kwasi Amissah-Arthur has given the Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA) and sanitation officers 10 days to clear all refuse at unapproved dump sites in the metropolis.
The government is said to have put in place a 100-day contingency plan to deal with the outbreak of cholera. The plan involves the evacuation of mountains of piled-up refuse at certain locations in the country.
The Daily Graphic is worried about the fact that it has to take the intervention of the Vice-President for the AMA to realise that filth has engulfed the entire Millennium City.
Our take on the piled-up refuse and the risk of a cholera epidemic is that the AMA and other stakeholders must make clean-up campaigns routine exercises in the metropolis.
But to sustain a clean environment, the assembly must compel deviant residents to conform by invoking its bye-laws to punish polluters. It must also sanction those who fail to clean the gutters in front of their houses.
The Daily Graphic challenges all Ghanaians to make personal hygiene part and parcel of their lifestyle in order to prevent the deadly disease from spreading in future.
