By James Esuon
Agona Swedru (C/R), Feb 19, GNA – The Agona West Municipal Environmental Health and Sanitation Directorate has embarked on aggressive public education on environmental cleanliness to combat the cholera outbreak in the Municipality.
The education has started in churches, lorry stations, market centres, pubs and other public places to encourage the people to keep their environment tidy, and ‘’ so far so good.’’
Mr Emmanuel Ampong, Principal Environmental Health Officer of Agona West, who was addressing the media at Agona Swedru noted that most private and public basic schools had been covered.
Mr Ampong expressed regret about the recent cholera cases, saying the Municipality had for many years, not recorded the disease in the Area and attributed the cases on the failure of the people to keep their environment tidy.
‘’We in the Environmental Health and Sanitation Department of the Agona West Municipal Assembly are doing our best to totally eradicate environmentally related diseases,’’ he added.
‘’ It is our utmost priority to ensure that our Municipality maintain its feat as the cleanest Municipality in the Central Region for eight consecutive years, we will not rest on our oars until we achieve improved health for the people in our operational area,’’ Mr Ampong said.
He, however lamented that some residents had deliberately turned deaf ears to the call on them to always keep their environment clean.
Mr Ampong said even though public education on environmental cleanliness was ongoing, they had been compelled to prosecute 11 sanitation offenders at the law court to serve as deterrent to others.
They were charged with various sanitation offences including discharging of septic tank into public drains, dumping of refuse at unauthorized places and selling of expired products to the public, among others.
Mr Ampong said some of them were cautioned to be of good behaviour, others fined according to the degree of offence, with others being put on surveillance cameras and being monitored.
Meanwhile, Mr Christian Ocran, the Agona West Municipal Manager of Zoomlion Company Limited gave an assurance that his outfit would continue to work assiduously to keep the Municipality clean.
He has therefore called on the residents to continually patronise the household dustbins for refuse collection to ensure utmost tidiness, especially in Swedru township.
GNA