By Dennis Peprah
Abesim, (B/R), April 17, GNA – Mr Samuel Kofi Adagbodzo, the Sunyani Municipal Planning Officer, has cautioned the assembly’s waste collectors to be diligent in waste collection or lose their contracts.
He indicated the assembly’s determination to keep Sunyani clean, saying the authorities would therefore not hesitate to abrogate or terminate contracts that failed to meet the expectations of the assembly in waste collection.
Mr Adagbodzo gave the caution when he responded to some questions on measures the assembly had put in place to evacuate heaps of refuse dumps in the Sunyani Municipality at a stakeholders meeting held at Abesim, near Sunyani.
The Global Media Foundation (GLoMeF), a media advocacy and human rights non-governmental organisation, organised the meeting to collect feedback on a project it is implementing in the Sunyani Municipality.
With support from other partner NGOs, including Indigenous Women Empowerment Network and Citizens Watch Ghana, GLoMeF is implementing the three-year Resilient City for Adolescents Project, (RC4A) in the Sunyani Municipality.
According to the foundation, the 300,000-pound sterling project, being funded by the Swiss Bortnar Foundation, seeks to improve lives and tackle the emerging challenges confronting the adolescent people in the Municipality.
However, the project’s stakeholders comprising representatives of the Ghana Education Service (GES), Ghana Health Service (GHS) Department of Gender, National Youth Authority (NYA) and civil society actors and organisations expressed concern about heaps of refuse dumps left at some localities in the Municipality.
Mr Adagbodzo explained the Sunyani Municipal Assembly had prioritised sanitation issues, and it had accordingly procured and distributed quantities of refuse containers and waste bins to households in the municipality.
Additionally, the assembly had procured two brand new sanitation trucks for waste collection, and cautioned residents against dumping waste indiscriminately.
The Municipal Planning Officer said littering and indiscriminate dumping of waste and refuse would not only make the township dirty but could contribute to outbreak of communicable diseases.
Mr Adagbodzo said sanitation and proper waste management remained a shared and collective responsibility and called on the stakeholders to also contribute their quota to keep the environment clean at all times.
Mrs Jocelyn Adii, the Bono Regional Director of the Department of Gender, called on the assembly to rehabilitate the Children’s Park in Sunyani to create avenues that would help unearth and nurture the inherent talent and skills of young people.
Mr Raphael Godlove Ahenu, the Chief Executive Officer, GLoMeF, said the project implementation required support from all the stakeholders to achieve desirable outcomes.
In an open forum, some of the stakeholders, including parents, lauded the project’s concept but entreated the implementers to build and strengthen relationship with parents to monitor and check the movements of the adolescent engaged in the project implementation.
GNA