EDITORIAL: The Bins Are Here

Email This Page Last week the Accra Metropolitan Authority (AMA) commissioned 5000 litter bins it had taken delivery of for the city. Normally this should have been no news at all, or at best it could make a few lines buried somewhere in the inside pages. But we had to give it the lead status in our Friday edition because this time round, it is news, big news.

The city of Accra, like most other Ghanaian urban centres has fallen prey to the antisocial habit of littering. Everywhere one turns, one sees some litter, usually non-biodegradable plastics in the bushes, by the wayside, in gutters, on footpaths - everywhere. We have done stories on this unacceptable environmental husbandry a number of times, calling on the city authorities to take action.

We cannot be presumptuous to assume that it is because of our stories that AMA has commissioned the litterbins for the city, but we can say we are very delighted that they did.

Now it is left to the rest of us to make use of them. That's where AMA's authority would be tested. What if the city dwellers ignore them? This is a genuine concern because we are so inured in our bad ways that even initiatives like the one under discussion could easily be treated with contempt. It's all part of the indiscipline we've been talking about. What should/would the AMA do, should this initiative be treated with contempt?

Answer: Any social campaign without an element of enforcement could/would end in derision. AMA therefore must start enforcing its byelaws, which means litterbugs must be made to face the law. After a few well-publicised prosecutions, we will all fall in line.

A good one there, AMA!