The Tema Metropolitan Assembly [TMA], in collaboration with the Ghana Police Service on Wednesday embarked on a crackdown on the activities of refuse collectors who use tricycles popularly known as ‘aboboya’, to dump refuse around the Tema motorway.
The apprehended tricycle riders were made to collect the refuse they left on the motorway to the Kpone land fill site in Tema to serve as a deterrent.
The TMA has further warned that it will deal ruthlessly with offenders if they do not desist from being public nuisance.
The Assembly hopes to engage the Ghana Highway Authority to ban these tricycle riders from moving on the highway as part of efforts to curb their illegal activities.
Felix Mensah-La, Mayor of the Tema Metropolitan Assembly speaking to Citi News said, “We as an Assembly cannot sit down for them to continue to dump refuse on the Motorway, so today for instance the special task-force together with the police arrested about 25 ‘aboboyas’ (tricycles). We are saying this to both the Aboboya Associations in Accra and those ones we have in Tema; they are in to do business and should do fair business with the Assembly. If they continue to behave this way we will take action against them.”
Background
For some months now, some refuse collectors in the city of Tema have adopted a very unhealthy approach of disposing refuse. They collect the waste from homes by dumping them on the major highways in the country.
The major culprits in this act are the tricycle riders who according to eyewitnesses pretend to have a fault with their tricycles and end up offloading their refuse load at those spots.
The acts of these unscrupulous folks have turned various parts of the Accra-Tema Motorway into an eyesore with a very foul stench.
The Accra-Tema Motorway is suffering the brunt of the illegality as refuse collectors who use tricycles, in an attempt to make more money, dispose the waste meant for landfill sites in the median of the motorway.
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By: Michael Ogbodu/citifmonline.com