Lifestyle Gallery undertakes clean-up of Osu Cemetery
An international branding decor company, Lifestyle Gallery Limited, has embarked on an exercise to improve sanitation at the Osu Cemetery in Accra.
For three weeks, the company cleared the overgrown weeds and filth that had accumulated in the cemetery over a long period.
In addition, it cleaned the tombs, cut down trees, removed broken down equipment from the walkway and fumigated the entire cemetery.
Speaking to the Daily Graphic after the clean-up exercise, the Facility Manager of Lifestyle Gallery, Mr Peter Yerba Appiagyei, said “We carried about nine trucks of refuse from the place.”
“We also cleaned the cemetery walls which had been desecrated by human waste,” he added.
Why the exercise
Explaining why the company decided to embark on the clean-up exercise, Mr Appiagyei said one of the directors of Lifestyle Gallery Limited was buried at the place about 20 years ago.
"We have been visiting the cemetery periodically but recently we realised that the cemetery had lost its appeal because of filth. We also observed that the sanitation condition at the Osu Cemetery had deteriorated. Even the wall behind Parliament looks like a forest and nobody can enter," he said.
Apart from the poor sanitary condition, Mr Appiagyei said “the entrance to the cemetery and the walkway become muddy whenever it rains".
After the exercise, he said the company gave the caretakers of the cemetery dustbins, wheelbarrows, spraying machines and fumigating materials.
Mr Appiagyei said the company planned to undertake clean-up exercises every three months in order to maintain a good sanitary condition at the cemetery.
Redesign
He indicated that the company was ready to redesign the Osu Cemetery in Accra and make the place more conducive.
He said the redesigning, which will include raising up the cemetery wall with a fence metal and decorating the entire payment, would cost the company GH¢80,000
The move, Mr Appiagyei said, formed part of the social corporate responsibility of the company.
"As a company, we believe that one of the ways to contribute towards national development is to help improve places where urgent support is needed to maintain.”
Mr Appiagyei, therefore, appealed to the Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA) to deploy more security men and caretakers at the Osu Cemetery to protect the company’s investment.