Vice President of IMANI Ghana, Kofi Bentil has said Ghana\u2019s capital city, Accra, has been designed to be dirty.<\/p>\n
He argued that contrary to the widely held perception that Ghanaians are dirty by nature, in his opinion, \u201cGhanaians are not dirty! This city is designed to be dirty and the people whom we\u2019ve paid to work don\u2019t work. Our city is designed to be dirty.\u201d<\/p>\n
[contextly_sidebar id=”EXlQCEPhpuFC3PAZC3BKDEe3bbu1HAUR”]His comments come on the back of the institution of a National Sanitation Day exercise which takes on place on the first Saturday of every month.<\/p>\n
The National Sanitation Day exercise was instituted following a deadly outbreak of cholera in 2014 which claimed hundreds of lives and infected about 10,000 people.<\/p>\n
Many are those who have kicked against the idea and have suggested that waste management companies must be resourced to daily clean up the various cities and failure to do so must attract strict sanctions.<\/p>\n
Others have also called for legal backing for the exercise<\/strong><\/span><\/a> to force every Ghanaian to partake following the citizen apathy<\/strong><\/span><\/a> which has characterized the exercise since its inception in 2014.<\/p>\n Sharing his thoughts on the matter on Citi FM\u2019<\/strong>s news analysis programme, The Big Issue<\/strong><\/em>, IMANI Ghana\u2019s Vice President insisted that how the city of Accra has been designed is the sole cause of the filth which has engulfed it.<\/p>\n He said: \u201cWhen you design open drains, when you don\u2019t clear bushes, when you don\u2019t provide dustbins, when you don\u2019t provide places of convenience for people in transit, and when the main river running through the city is surrounded almost by design by markets and slums in which they push this rubbish\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n \u201c\u2026when you have a walking distance from the office of the Metropolitan Chief Executive, sludge being poured raw into the sea, when you have a treatment plant that has not worked and nobody cares, when you collect taxes, misuse, steal and waste on there is no consequence on the head, you have designed a failure!\u201d<\/p>\n According to him, the annual cholera outbreak in Ghana is \u201cnot a personal hygiene issue; it\u2019s a municipal hygiene issue.\u201d<\/p>\n He therefore suggested that anyone \u201cwho is self-respecting and running a city that gets cholera must resign! It is criminal negligence!\u201d<\/p>\n Kofi Bentil recalled that there was a time in the history of Ghana when citizens were forced to sleep as 6 o\u2019clock and ordered to jump into the gutters and clean them but over 20 years on, \u201cthe same gutters are still dirty in Nima!\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt is the definition of insanity to do the same thing and expect a different result. We\u2019ve been there; we\u2019ve done that even better\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n He remarked that the nation is ignoring the fundamental issue which is the failure of persons who have been paid to keep the nation clean and the refusal of the leadership of the country to deal with them.<\/p>\n \u201cOur President made it a virtue to jump into a gutter. If he had died of typhoid, that would have been a stupid death because your job as President is not to be in gutters but it\u2019s to fire the people who don\u2019t do these jobs. Anybody who thinks this is the solution doesn\u2019t deserve the seat they occupy,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n By: Efua Idan Osam\/citifmonline.com\/Ghana<\/p>\n