Editorial: The filth encircling us - Assemblies, wake up!

In our Thursday June 15, 2006 edition of The Chronicle we sounded the alarm bells on how garbage and the stench thereof was encircling residents of Korle-Gonno and its surrounding areas, with the obvious threat of a cholera outbreak. The problem was not limited to the area referred to above, but to other parts of the nation’s capital, Accra.

Reports had it that the Chief of Oblogo, the main dumping site of all of Accra’s rubbish, had placed an embargo on the Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA), from dumping refuse at his back yard.

The result was that vehicles that emptied rubbish containers from various parts of the city could not do so. This left the frontage of many houses in the capital decorated with bags and containers of rubbish, whilst the rubbish containers placed at various points overflowed.

The threat to health was too obvious for it not to have attracted urgent attention.

The argument of the Chief and his people was very simple. Promises made to them upon which they had allowed the dumping of refuse at their backyard had not been fulfilled. A downpour had carried rubbish into people’s homes, exposing them to danger. Having fulfilled their side of the bargain by allowing rubbish to be dumped on their land, they were justly demanding what was due them.

Indeed projects like the school, market, clinic and rehabilitation of roads in the area that were promised the people and which they are demanding are things that they, as Ghanaians, contributing to the development of the nation, were entitled to.

The residents of Oblogo did not need to have rubbish visited on them to deserve those projects. Even though rubbish collected must be dumped at one place or the other, in the absence of a compost site, it must, at no point in time, be allowed to pose a health hazard to the residents in the neighbourhood of such dump sites.

But more importantly, even as The Chronicle believes that as a country, we need to do better at the management of our waste than hitherto, public officials must endeavour to always keep faith with the people, by fulfilling promises they make to them.

This is very crucial because if this attitude of not standing by their words continued, there would come a time that serious statements from public officials would be treated with contempt when it mattered most.

For a long time now, there has been a cholera outbreak in the country, hovering its length and breadth, terminating the lives of people even in the nation’s capital, Accra, where health and other facilities abound.

There is the need therefore for the AMA and all the Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies in the country to wake up to their responsibilities of keeping their various jurisdictions clean to safeguard the health of their people.