Story: Mary Ankrah
THE Mayor of Accra, Alfred Oko Vanderpuije has sent a strong warning that his assembly will deal ruthlessly with people who post posters and mount signpost indiscriminately at public places.
He said offenders would be prosecuted and those found guilty would be made to pay fines and if possible imprisoned.
He made this statement at a public forum dubbed “Assembly in Focus” held in Accra and urged churches, businesspeople and individuals involved in such an act to desist from that.
In spite of, the various challenges most assemblies faced, Mr Vanderpuije said the AMA had succeeded in completing and initiating a number of developmental projects in the fields of education, sanitation, and roads to the benefit the people.
In the area of education, he said the government had been able to put an end to the shift system two years ago to enable teachers to have enough time to teach the children.
Mr Vanderpuije said the system allowed children to play truant in school and most of them were found selling on the streets during school hours.
“We just did not end the shift system, we built over 450 temporal structures throughout the sub-metros of the city and provided over 17,000 furniture into the classrooms to end the system”, he added.
He also said the government upon realising that some of the classrooms in the metropolise were in deplorable conditions, the AMA had commenced the building of modern educational facilities called the “Millennium City School” to provide the children with a conducive environment to facilitate learning.
In that direction, out of the 50 school blocks the AMA intended to build, it had constructed about 18, 3-storey classroom blocks with science and computer laboratories and libraries throughout the metropolises with the first two classroom blocks being commissioned next month at Mamprobi M One compound and Salvation compound at Latebiokoshie.
He mentioned that it was also important to improve the methodology of teachers by sharpening their knowledge in Information and Communication Technology (ICT), therefore the AMA had the intention of organising educational programmes and training for teachers to enhance teaching and learning .
Highlighting the progress made in sanitation, Mr Vanderpuije said the assembly had introduced a system whereby dustbins had been provided households and were registered to allow waste management companies to collect the refuse around the metropolis.
He cited that in the past few years Accra was categorised as the dirtiest city and country in the world, producing 2,200 tons of rubbish per day.
Notwithstanding, the AMA initiatives had helped to improve the sanitation system and that at the recent climate change summit in South Africa two months ago, the United Nations (UN) Environmental and Sanitation monitoring result showed that Accra was among the best five cleaniest city-countries in the world.
He therefore encouraged all Ghanaians to register with the waste management companies to enable them dispose of their refuse in a more scientific manner in order to keep the environment clean.
Still on sanitation, the Mayor said all landscape refuse sites would be cleared and closed in the next three months, including the ones at Anyaa and Mallam and would introduce a modern and scientific structures whereby refuse would be recycled and used to produce products that would benefit the country.
He also observed that the government had given every household up to September 2012 to build toilet facilities in their homes and those who would not comply would be prosecuted.
To this end, he said the AMA had constructed about 45 public places of convenience (public toilet) across the metropolis so that people would have a place to defecate when they are in public.
Besides, the Mayor observed that Lavender hill in the Chorkor suburb of Accra, one of the places where liquid sewerage collected in the city is disposed off into the sea, had become a threat to the people since in the process the beach and the environment is contaminated.
He assured all that “by June, Lavender hill would be closed due to the insanitary activities going on there” and that the government was putting up a new liquid waste plant at East Legon to be completed in June to solve the problem of liquid waste management in Accra whereby people would be able to dispose their waste scientifically.
On roads, Mr Vanderpuije noted that there had been lots of road and gutter construction projects across the metropolis.
He mentioned that about 400 buildings in water ways at Latebiokoshie, Sukura and Manponse communities had been destroyed to ensure a proper drainage system especially during raining season.
“We did not just want to break people’s houses but wanted to end the disaster striker and remove poor living standard at those areas.”
He said the decongestion exercise in the city was to help the city dwellers to have a good livelihood and better environment and advised them to abide by the laws of the land.
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