We must be adherents of the ‘Accra Bible’

The Greater Accra Regional Coordinating Council (GARCC) has developed a regional charter to ensure the realisation and sustainability of the ‘Let’s Make Accra Work’ initiative introduced by the Regional Minister, Mr Henry Quartey.

Titled: ‘The Accra Bible’, the charter seeks to address the complex challenges affecting the region, particularly the business districts and congested areas.

The Daily Graphic lauds this bold step by the GARCC to come up with a blueprint that provides guidelines on how to overcome the myriad of challenges in the region to enable Accra to become a world-class capital that will rub shoulders with other national capitals.

The guidelines cut across traffic regulations, security issues, sanitation, education, land sale, among others, as well as the general vision of the region.

It is an open secret that all metropolitan, municipal and district assemblies (MMDAs), including the Accra Metropolitan Assembly, have many bye-laws aimed at ensuring sanity in the MMDAs.

However, it is how to enforce these bye-laws that have remained a problem and allowed residents and visitors to act lawlessly by flouting every bye-law.

It is the view of the Daily Graphic that the ‘Accra Bible’ will suffer the same fate if efforts are not made at the onset to ensure the strict implementation of the charter when it is rolled out after it has been ratified and gazetted.

We urge all stakeholders, including the Ghana Police Service, the Ghana Bar Association and all metropolitan, municipal and district chief executives (MMDCEs), when they are appointed, to take the ‘Accra Bible’ as the gospel truth, preach it to their constituents and ensure that it is followed through to the letter.

We are in full support of the charter, as it will also serve as a guide for all Greater Accra Regional ministers and MMDCEs to follow to achieve the ultimate goal of making Accra work and becoming comparable to other national capitals around the world.

We owe it to ourselves to ensure a clean environment all-year round by promoting responsible living, which the ‘Accra Bible’ seeks to ensure.

If for nothing at all, the launch of the ‘Let’s Make Accra Work’ initiative in May this year and the very positive outcomes actions emanating from that drive have brought to us as a people should tell us that should we propagate the gospel according to the ‘Accra Bible’, we will see a clean and orderly Greater Accra Region and, by extension, a very beautiful country of which we will all be proud.

The relocation of onion sellers and scrap dealers from Agbogbloshie to Adjen Kotoku, which resulted in the reclamation of 18.3 acres of land, is ample evidence that if we put our mind to it, we can have an orderly society where the laws work.

Now, as a result of the work done at Agbogbloshie, we have a vast tract of land at the city centre for redevelopment, and already there are plans for a district hospital.

We are positive that the plan by the GARCC to engage with the assemblies to revive some of the bye-laws which have become dormant, such as those on sanitation, road traffic, as well as the operation of motorbikes and tricycles, will go to complement the charter.

For instance, tricycles, popularly known as ‘aboboyaa’ have become so much of a nuisance because they dump refuse along principal streets, thereby adding to the already existing insanitary situation in the region.

Therefore, enacting a bye-law to ban all tricycles from using the principal streets and highways in the region, as proposed by Mr Quartey, will be quite appropriate.

We enjoin all stakeholders to push for the acceptance and propagation of the ‘Accra Bible’. Let us spread the good news, when the ratification and the gazetting is done, to make Accra work again.