Accra is not as Filthy as it used to be

Sydney, Australia, -- The Minister for Local Government, Rural Development and Environment, Asamoah-Boateng, on Wednesday rejected the assertion that Accra is filthy.

The Minister was on his way to Ghana from Auckland, New Zealand, where he attended a bi-annual conference of the Commonwealth public officers of Local Government. In Sydney the Minister was the special guest of honour at a spectacular Ghana @50 celebration which took place on Saturday 31 March 2007.

In an interview granted to an Africa program on 88.9FM in Sydney the Minister was upbeat about the progress that the country has made in the six years that the NPP government has been in power.

On sanitation situation in the country the Minister was categorical, stating: “Accra is not as filthy as it used to be anymore …there have been a massive improvement since this government came to power,” he said.

According to the Minister, since the government of NPP came to power, public education has intensified and that people are understanding that it is not okay to litter.

“The Public education has started and we are doing a lot of publicity and people are beginning to take notice. We are also taking into night cleaning execises … and Accra is now cleaned in the middle of the night. We are also enforcing the law and that we are bringing back inspectors to enforce the law,” the Minister said.

On the issue of the $20 million dollars that was set aside for the Ghana @ 50, the Minister was scathing, dismissing the criticism as misconceived. The Minister said that the money was not spent on fleet of cars alone, but some of the money went into sanitation, rest stop and places of convenience across the country.

“Relatively speaking it is no money on the kind of activities and programs we undertook. In fact if we look at it closely the toilets et cetera we are talking about has been done. We are building rest stop facilities across the major cities. When we are building the parade grounds, it is investment. The moneys were for other things as well, such as souveneers.”

The Minister was particularly incensed when he was asked whether it was necessary to buy that many cars for the function

“ I can understand why people keep on talking about the cars. The cars were necessary because the Heads of States who attended needed the cars…I shepherded His Excellency Robert Mugabe around and in fact he alone had three cars at his disposal. So imagine we had 28 heads of states at the function, would people expect us to bring heads of states into the country without cars to take them around?” He asked.

The Minister further said that the fleet of cars are going to be used for other events such as the Africa Union conference coming up in July and the finance Ministers conference coming up in June.

The Minister also spoke about the transformation of the economy. He said we must have a transformation in our economic future where our production capacity must have an impact on somebody’s life so that that person can ask for what we produce. He said the country has now accepted the concept of rule of law, and we are now in situation where we can tolerate each others political views without threats to ones life. This, according to the Minister is the transformation of the economy.

The Minister further called on Ghanaians abroad to come home with their skills so that they can impart them into the wider community. He said that where that is not possible they should use the internet on various Ghana websites to impart the knowledge since they themselves also read the news on the internet.

“What is happening in Ghana is not that we don’t have the resources. It is the human capacity to transform the various sectors, such as the agricilture sector into agro processing… that can give us the launching pad for industralization,” he said.

According to the Minister outside Ghanaians have a lot of skills which will be needed to transform the economy into export competitiveness. This is what he describes as the transformation of the economy.

The Minister leaves Australia for Ghana this week.