Bye-law on sanitation soon

A draft legislation which will serve as a model bye-law for all the 216 district assemblies and make it mandatory for all citizens to participate in the national sanitation exercise is currently before the Attorney General to be passed into law.

That law, according to a Deputy Minister of Local Government and Rural Development,  Nii Lante Vanderpuye, had become necessary to whip up the interest of residents to participate in the exercise scheduled for the first Saturday of every month.

Mr Vanderpuye was interacting with the media after a three-hour meeting with district chief executives, co-ordinating directors and environmental health officers in the Eastern Region in the run-up to the National Sanitation Day exercise scheduled for Saturday.

The meeting was organised to fine-tune strategies to ensure the success of the exercise.

Mr Vanderpuye described the level of apathy among some Ghanaians as unacceptable, and expressed the hope that the new legislation when passed into law, would give the legal backing for the assemblies to deal sternly with those who intentionally refused to participate in the exercise.

The Eastern Region gears up

The region, according to the regional minister, Mr Antwi Boasiako-Sekyere, was prepared to host the fifth Sanitation Day scheduled for Easter Saturday.

According to him, the region had received 7,500 trash bins out of the 10,000 expected for the exercise.

He said the trash bins would be distributed to district assemblies and corporate organisations to help check indiscriminate littering and dumping of solid waste.

As a prelude to the day, the Regional Co-ordinating Council and the Ghana Private Road Transport Union ( GPRTU) had introduced trash bins for vehicles.

The move, he explained, was important to help keep lorry parks clean. "We welcome the challenge of hosting the Sanitation Day and hope to improve on the successes of the previous exercises in the other regions", he stated.

The National Sanitation Day was first introduced in November, 2014 with Accra as the focus. Subsequently, Ashanti, Northern, and recently Volta have all taken turns as the focal regions for the exercises.

Mr Bosiako-Sekyere said the region was ready to show that "The best comes from the east" come April 4, 2015.

He said enough awareness had been created having met with some religious, traditional and opinion leaders, and expressed the hope that residents would come out in their numbers to support the exercise.

Solid waste in the region

The Eastern Region generates in excess of 500 tons of refuse daily.

The regional capital, Koforidua, according to statistics from Zoomlion Ghana Limited, generates about 173 tons of refuse daily.

Koforidua, however, faces the challenge of lack of landfill site, as the only improvised one at Akwadum is virtually full.