The Minister of Sanitation and Water Resources, Hon. Dr. Freda Prempeh has hinted that the Ministry is readying to establishing a Sanitation Authority to regulate the sanitation service providers at both the local and national levels.
“The Authority will ensure that these tricycle operators and even the major service providers do the right thing at the right time,” she observed.
She explained that the absence of a regulator is making it difficult to sanction the service providers when they go contrary to the norm.
The Minister made this known when she was responding to a question on law enforcement in addressing some of the sanitation challenges of the country at a press briefing in Accra to announce a nationwide clean up exercise to be held on Saturday September 30, 2023.
The nationwide clean up event, under the theme “Cleaning for Safe, Healthy and Sustainable Ghana”, promises to be a defining moment in the nation’s ongoing commitment to improve environmental sanitation services and awareness creation.
According to the minister, to enhance the attainment of the Government’s vision of a clean Ghana and sustainable WASH service delivery, there is the need for all stakeholders to actively play their prescribed roles effectively.
She therefore called on stakeholders including the Government and non-state actors, the media as well as individuals to come together to plan and execute cleanup activities across the country.
As part of the cleanup exercise, the Ministry plans to engage traditional and social media sensitization campaigns, intensive premises inspection by staff of the District Assemblies, among others.
Dr. Freda Prempeh, used the opportunity to bemoan the activities of tricycle operators providing sanitation services to be a major hinderance to clearing the city of filth.
She noted that many of these operators after collecting the rubbish from homes and shops do not send it to the designated dumping areas but rather dump the refuse at their nearest convenience.
“What I have come to realize is that the tricycle operators are making the work of cleaning our environment and garbage collection difficult for all of us. They collect refuse from our households and they look left from right and dump it in the gutters and other unauthorized and illegal areas” she lamented.