By Anthony Adongo Apubeo
Bolgatanga, Feb. 7, GNA – Mr Roland Atanga Ayoo, the Bolgatanga Municipal Chief Executive (MCE), has warned that individuals and shop owners who flout sanitation regulations or refuse to participate in clean-up exercises will face strict sanctions.
The sanctions would include the closure of their shops.
He said the Bolgatanga Municipal Assembly had set up a sanitation task force to enforce compliance and ensure improved environmental cleanliness in the municipality, warning that perpetrators would be made to face the law.
Mr Ayoo issued the warning in an interview with the Ghana News Agency after a clean-up exercise organised by the Assembly as part of the National Sanitation Exercise.
The exercise brought together students, security agencies including the military, market women, tricycle drivers and other groups operating in designated areas across the municipality.
The MCE explained that although awareness had been created, some traders and residents deliberately refused to participate in the exercise, choosing instead to open their shops after the clean-up or leaving refuse around their premises.
“We have gone around and seen shops where rubbish has been left behind after selling. Some people even packaged their refuse and left it there, while others opened their shops and refused to join the clean-up exercise,” the MCE observed.
Mr Ayoo said such attitudes would no longer be tolerated, stressing that sanitation enforcement would be deliberate, stricter and sustained.
“What I intend doing is to work closely with the sanitation task force. When a clean-up exercise is ongoing and you are not there, and your shop is locked with its surroundings dirty, we will take measures. We will lock the shop and take further action,” he stated.
He disclosed that the Assembly was finalising new sanitation by-laws, which would soon come into force to empower authorities to apply immediate sanctions against offenders.
According to him, the long-term goal was to make sanitation a shared responsibility, proposing that residents and workers within government and official premises clean their surroundings regularly.
He added that future clean-up exercises would be extended to the outskirts of Bolgatanga. The Assembly would also intensify education, while monitoring teams would remain in town to ensure compliance.
“When this becomes a collective responsibility, attitudes will change, and we will see a cleaner Bolgatanga,” Mr Ayoo said.
Mr Yakubu Ayamga, the Upper East Regional Chairman of the Tricycle Drivers Association, who joined the clean-up exercise, commended the government for the initiative, saying it would instil environmental cleanliness among residents.
He bemoaned the poor sanitation situation in the municipality, noting that, “A lot of the gutters are choked, and our surroundings are full of plastic, and we need to intensify efforts.”
He proposed that the Assembly undertook stricter enforcement of sanitation by-laws.
“There should be an operation to clean up one’s frontage, and anyone who refuses should be punished,” he added.
Mr Ayamga said it was time individuals took responsibility for their own sanitation instead of waiting for the Assembly to organise clean-up exercises and urged his colleagues to always clean the stations where they operate.
GNA
Edited by Caesar Abagali/Benjamin Mensah