Not by mouth, nor by lashes. The battle is in the mind
Ask me how I will judge President Akufo-Addo after his first term. Certainly not by ‘One District One Factory’; not by ‘One Constituency One Million Dollars’; not by the fulfilment of any of his brick and mortar promises.
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If I ever live to write, by December 2020, that Akufo Addo is the most successful President of Ghana, it will be because he would have carried out his promise to make Accra “the cleanest city on the African continent”.
He made the vow at a durbar held in his honour by the people of the Ngleshie Alata Traditional Council at Mantse Agboona in Accra on Sunday, April 23, 2016.
If His Excellency the President had only hygiene at the back of his mind in making that vow, I would advise that he invite Dr. Joseph Siaw Agyepong, the Zoomlion Chief Executive Officer for a meeting. In that meeting he will find that sanitation is also money and jobs; in fact, for the NPP, it has also the potential to be a politically profitable assault.
Hear Dr Agyepong: “The Waste, Environment and Sanitation industry has the potential of making the Government’s ‘One District One Factory’ vision a reality. The industry provides waste collection and haulage, recycling - both organic and inorganic - solid waste, medical waste and faecal waste treatment and landfills management, among others, with modules that can be replicated in the various districts.”
That’s a lot of jobs.
There is a huge problem, however. Fighting the sanitation battle is going to be no less fierce than the galamsey war. It will be resisted – not with guns and machetes, but by the people’s settled way of thinking. At the risk of being misunderstood and quoted out of context, I will dare to say that Ghanaians have become slightly sub-human.
Go to the market or engage a Ghanaian in a chat at the lorry station. The Ghanaian will buy banana or maize (boiled or roasted), eat it and throw the waste on the ground right where he/she stands. What makes this deed more alarming is their reaction when you attempt to point out the wrongdoing.
They will stare at you as if you have just been discharged from a mental asylum. The people simply do not appreciate that filth is a problem. You’ll be lucky if we don’t ease ourselves right in your presence!!! Any wonder Accra is among the world’s 10 dirtiest cities?
This, I humbly submit, is where the battle should be waged – in the minds of the people. Sanitation Days, yes; but the sanitation battle has not been consistent in its assault on the people’s way of thinking. We are a dirty people (pardon my language), and until the law makers and law enforcers get this message, we shall be engaging in a pipe dream, stretching our hand from earth hoping to touch the moon.
It will take an assault equal in scale and scope to that which was unleashed on galamsey this month. It will take the media, in a ceaseless campaign backed by the people’s role models. It will take the two Ministries of Sanitation and Environment inviting the Ministries of Health and Information, to sit down and strategise with the aid of social-psychologists and communication gurus (not serial callers)
Sanitation is not the absence of waste. As human beings in a country exploding with human numbers, and which is fast industrializing, we will certainly generate waste. The problem is what we do with the waste.
Read the ‘Independent Online’ of Thursday, December 8, 2016. It reports that “Sweden’s recycling is so revolutionary, the country has to import rubbish from other countries to keep its recycling plants going.”
In the late 1980s, an Accra Mayor (a soldier by name Colonel Okine) supervised the establishment of a compost plant at Teshie. Two years later, as Accra was brimming with filth, the plant was not functioning.
Readers may recall that some time ago, Zoomlion gave out free waste bins to households in Accra. What happened? I will answer you. What happened to the people of Accra in 2011/12 is what happened to Ghanaians in the First Republic when Kwame Nkrumah placed waste bins everywhere. The result? Read Ayi Kwei Armah’s report as captured in his book, The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born’:
“People did not have to go up to the boxes any more. From a distance they aimed their rubbish at the growing heap, and a good amount of juicy offal hit the face and sides of the box before finding a final resting place upon the heap”.
I told you: the battle is upstairs. That is why I like the relative silence of the Minister of Sanitation. This battle is not about noise. It’s about the ability to package communication to reach the hearts and minds of millions of predominantly non-literate people who are happy eating food cooked and sold close to a public toilet overflowing with maggot-infested human putrefaction – not to talk of the overpowering stomach-turning stench!!!
PS: This article is a hymn to the efforts of the Citi fm breakfast show team, led by Bernard Avle, and Peace FM’s ‘Kokrokoo’ led by Kwame Sefa Kayi. They have started the assault. Who will join to make it a battle, or even a war – Kenneth Ashigbey? Imani? Ace Ankomah?
