Most parts of urban centres in Ghana, particularly Accra, are swamped with heaps of filth, choked gutters, free-flying plastics, and the unpleasant stench of clogged sewerage.
While waste management is a nationwide issue in Ghana, it’s most obvious in Accra, a fast-growing city of four million that generates about 3,000 metric tonnes of waste a day.
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The World Bank, for example, in 2012 estimated that Ghana loses an average of about $290 million as a result of poor sanitation. The report further states that most of these costs come from the annual premature death of 19,000 Ghanaians.
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The sight of piles of rubbish openly sitting along major streets is a common phenomenon when driving or taking a stroll. This debris always, someway somehow, gets back into the very gutters they were removed from causing artificial flooding during heavy rains.
Efforts and promises to tackle Accra’s sanitation challenges have yielded close to no results.
Some residents of Kwame Nkrumah circle complained about poor the pile of rubbish under the interchange. Some said where the gather the garbage is just a stone’s throw from the centre of trading activities, making it extremely difficult for traders to escape the fetid smell they meet at the beginning and the end of each working day.
Nii Ofori Quaye, PRO for the Korley Klottey Municipal Assembly told Happy FM’s Joseph Nii Ankrah in an interview that a waste collection team cleared refuse at circle and those found on the shoulders of the road at the end of each workday.
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He said waste management teams cleaned the piles of rubbish each day before trading commenced.
Nii Quaye advised residents to always endeavour to keep their surroundings clean as best they could.
