By Emmanuel Gamson
Sekondi (W/R), Nov. 22, GNA – The Sekondi-Takoradi Metropolitan Assembly (STMA) has launched “Operation clean your surroundings” campaign to help address the growing deplorable environmental sanitation practices within the Metropolis.
The campaign is a component of a three-year European Union (EU)-funded Twin-Cities in Sustainable Partnership Project (TCSPP) being implemented by the STMA, Palermo Municipality in Italy and, other partners and sought to address cleanliness within the environment to help promote healthy living conditions and enhance hygienic lifestyle among the people.
Launched in partnership with the TCSPP, were selected local radio stations, at Sekondi, with the campaign aimed at enforcing the Assembly’s environmental sanitation by-laws and encouraging citizens to take responsibility for their actions towards a clean environment.
It also sought to raise awareness of cleanliness, hygiene, waste management, and environmental preservation through media campaigns and the deployment of a task force to ensure residents complied with sanitation by-laws.
Mr Abdul-Mumin Issah, the Sekondi-Takoradi Metropolitan Chief Executive (MCE), launching the campaign said the poor sanitary conditions at homes, eateries, markets, transport terminals and other workplaces continued to spread communicable diseases like cholera, malaria and typhoid among residents within the Metropolis.
He said despite the STMA’s efforts in tackling sanitation issues within the Metropolis, some residents still engaged in unhygienic practices that flouted the Assembly’s by-laws.
Speaking on some of the sanitation issues within the Metropolis, he said 15 communities especially along the shores were classified as open defecation prone.
The MCE indicated that in 2021, 176 people were arrested for open defecation, 89 were arrested in 2022, and 40 at the end of the third quarter of 2023.
Mr Issah said: “This year alone, 27 houses without toilets and 30 other sanitation-related nuisances have been prosecuted successfully, and these interventions, to a large extent, have helped to improve sanitation and hygiene in the Metropolis, but the progress has been slower than anticipated”.
He, however, expressed worry that: “It is sad to note that people are still openly defecating at seashores and bushes despite the numerous efforts to discourage the phenomena of open defecation.
The habit of some residents deliberately dumping waste into drains, roadsides, and other unauthorized places continues to choke drains, causing flooding in the Metropolis.”
The MCE noted that the campaign would therefore educate, arrest, prosecute, name and shame sanitation-related offenders across the Metropolis.
“We ultimately aim to collectively change certain socio-cultural practices from the community members towards environmental sanitation,” he added.
Mr Aziz Mahmoud, TCSPP Governance and Social Accountability Officer, said inadequate sanitation infrastructure and planning and poor attitudes of residents towards proper waste disposal were some of the factors that accounted for the poor state of sanitation within the Metropolis.
He said the campaign was, therefore, meant to raise awareness about cleanliness, proper waste disposal and environmental preservation through various advocacy platforms to help effect attitudinal change towards sanitation among the people.
Mr John Latse, TCSPP Communication and Visibility Officer, outlining some of the campaign’s mode of implementation, said the STMA and its partners would undertake unannounced visits to households, eateries, hospitality facilities, markets, transport terminals among other places to inspect the state of sanitation and hygiene within those areas.
GNA