Minister proposes community service for convicts

The Minister of Sanitation and Water Resources, Cecilia Abena Dapaah, has advocated community service for persons guilty of some criminal offences, to help rid the country of filth.

Charging the various municipal and district assemblies to enforce the sanitation bye-laws and drive pro-active measures to deal with insanitary conditions, the Minister advised that the assemblies “consider the option of communal labour for people who flout the laws and impose fines rather than custodial sentences”.

Ms Dapaah made the call when she inaugurated the Kpone-Katamanso Sanitation Strategy and Quarterly Clean up exercises by the Kpone-Katamanso Municipal Assembly (KKMA).

The event also outdoored a 10-member task force by the assembly to implement the programme, to ensure the municipality became one of the cleanest within the Greater Accra Region.

According to the Minister, Accra alone generates 5,000 tonnes of solid waste and 3,000 tonnes of plastic waste and all hands must be on deck to process, recycle and transform such waste into wealth.

Ms Dapaah disclosed that a new policy was in the offing to complement existing laws, to effectively tackle insanitary conditions prevailing in the country, assuring that government will live up to its responsibility by adequately providing all the needed resources to complement the efforts of the assemblies.

“Ghana can only leverage on the tourism and industrialisation policies if we have a clean and neat environment to attract tourists and investors. Ghanaians must develop a conscious attitude to clean our environments because it plays a key role in the national development agenda,” the Minister urged.

Making a brief stopover at the Kpone Landfill Site later on to ascertain the conditions at the place, Ms Dapaah announced that the road network to and within the site will be reshaped and given a facelift to enable trucks have easy access to offload their refuse.

Municipal Chief Executive (MCE) of Kpone-Katamanso, Mr Solomon Appiah, said that the issue of sanitation was a major challenge confronting many countries and demanded the commitment and support of all to achieve a clean society.

He said that the impact of poor sanitation on the health of the citizenry and the national economy was huge and it was important that the challenge was addressed head on.

The MCE indicated that the Assembly would play its role to bring the vision of President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo to make Accra the cleanest city a reality, promising that the Assembly would not relent in its efforts to enforce its by laws and promote positive attitudes among residents.

By Times Reporter