The Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA), says its Public Health officials will soon begin a special operation to drive away traders who display their goods on bare floor and at unauthorised places.
The exercise, geared towards applying the sanitation laws and making markets cleaner and safer will begin at the Agbogbloshie market, today, February 1.
The Chief Executive Officer of the AMA, Madam Elizabeth Naa Kwatsoe Tawiah Sackey said this when she paid an unannounced visit to the market ahead of the exercise to decongest the city.
“We shall deal decisively with traders who display their goods on the bare floor for sale and at unauthorised places at the Agbogbloshie market. We are going to enforce the bye-laws to the letter,” she said.
The Mayor, however, said traders found selling behind the dwarf wall of the market and along the road would be arrested, fined and/or prosecuted – adding that vehicles parked on the shoulders of the road would be towed.
“The traders have already been educated not to display their foodstuff on the bare ground for sale but the practice persists. We will ensure that they leave the mandated three feet gap between the ground and their foodstuff,” she said.
Madam Tawiah Sackey cautioned buyers to refrain from buying at roadsides along the markets to avoid arrest and prosecution, adding that buying at the roadside could be fatal in case of a road accident.
The Public Health Department of the Assembly prosecuted 477 environmental health and sanitation offenders in 2022, out of the 784 cases recorded for the year.
The offences had to do with accumulation of refuse, food safety issues, waste collection, registration failure, insanitary drains and overgrown weeds.
Other offences that led to the prosecutions were open defecation, littering the city Centre, including some environmental health and sanitation offences contrary to the Public Health Act 851 (Act 2012), AMA 2017 Bye-laws.
Source: GNA