Hohoe, June 1, GNA - Togbega Gabusu VI, Paramount Chief of Gbi Traditional Area, has reiterated that the traditional council would boycott all the activities of the Hohoe Municipal Assembly until it accorded it the necessary reverence. "Until they turn a new leaf, accord us respect, and see us as partners,we are not in business with them," he said.

Togbega Gabusu was speaking at a forum on Monday to discuss the escalating sanitation problems facing the Municipality and the way forward with stakeholders at Hohoe. He blamed the problem on the leadership of the assembly, stressing that, the Council would continue to shun it until the Assembly regarded it as a development partner and not an antagonist.

Togbega said land for a new cemetery and landfill sites had been procured but the Assembly had failed on numerous occasions to go and negotiate with the owners to have access.

He said the current landfill sites for liquid and solid waste had exhausted their capacity and no amount of re-cycling could salvage the situation. The Paramount Chief noted that re-using marked graves and congested dump sites could trigger an epidemic with huge consequences if they were not properly planned.

He said availability of land had never been a problem but the inactivity and negative posturing of the Assembly had prevented them from negotiations. Togbe Gboxo I, Chief of Gbohome, explaining the scenarios leading to the boycott, said the Municipal Assembly continued to treat the Council with disdain "doing little or nothing with words of wisdom from the elders." He said, for instance, they advised the Assembly about maximizing land use for development projects by laying the foundation for storey building so that in future other institutions could utilise such facilities.

Togbe Gboxo said this advice was ignored because he suspected that certain people felt that they could not maximise their gains in the award of contracts. He said the judicious use of lands with storey buildings could benefit other institutions like the Commission for Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ), the National Commission for Civic Education (NCCE) and other justice related organisations, which were currently housed in private property.

Togbe Gboxo said the deliberate exclusion of the representative of Gbi Traditional Council from the Assembly was an absurdity, adding that, in as much as there were different traditional areas in the Municipality, Gbi was the nerve-centre of the area and people outside this jurisdiction could not speak on pertinent issues like sanitation for people of Hohoe.

He said the Council was not interested in being a member of a tender committee but as custodians of the land they were only interested in the right things being done.

Mr Hope Howusu, Hohoe Municipal Coordinating Director, said the Assembly had paid GH¢ 2,300 to ZoomLion for equipment to clear and evacuate the "mountainous" refuse dumps in the area but they failed to show up. He said sanitation became topical at its Executive Committee meeting recently and the problem was being tackled head-on.

Mr Howusu announced that a sanitation monitoring taskforce would be established as soon as practicable and a road-map fashioned. He promised that henceforth the administration would be stringent on the portion of the District Assembly's Common Fund (DACF) for sanitation to prevent the outbreak on epidemic.