Despite missing out on the initial target of making Accra the cleanest city in Africa within four years, the Minister-designate for Sanitation and Waters Resources, Cecilia Dapaah, says the Akufo-Addo administration is still on course to fulfilling this promise.
“Accra is on course to become the cleanest city that the President said in absolute terms. I think we are on course looking at what we started doing and what I continued from my colleague,” the nominee said during her vetting on Tuesday.
It was back in 2017 that President Akufo-Addo declared his government’s intention to make Ghana’s capital city the cleanest on the continent by the end of his first term in office.
Mrs. Dapaah noted that “when you start a process, it takes time to yield results.”
She cited some government programmes like the provision of dust bins on streets to prevent littering as being key to this target.
“Most important of all we have also through the GAMA [Greater Accra Metropolitan Area] project provided 33,00 household toilets. That is also part of the cleanliness projects we have undertaken,” Mrs. Dapaah added.
In remarks back in August 2020, Mrs. Dapaah, who was the Sanitation and Waters Resources minister, said the government had attained the goal to make Accra the cleanest City during the lockdown necessitated by the coronavirus pandemic.
But she said after the restrictions were lifted, the filth started re-emerging.
Mrs. Dapaah further noted that the proposed Sanitation Fund will aid efforts to make Ghana as a whole cleaner.
“We are proposing that there should be a Sanitation Fund, either supplied by the government of Ghana or through a Sanitation Levy so that we will be well-equipped financially to take care of the gap in the financing of sanitation in this country.”
