AMA is chasing few and neglecting the many
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Among my pick of headlines for last week was the Daily Graphic’s piece on the Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA) hauling property rate defaulters to court. The story sent me cracking and leaving a few thoughts running through my mind.
According to the story published online last Wednesday, the AMA has hauled 12 people to court for failing to settle their property rates for 2012, while 43 other cases are yet to be tried. The story quotes the AMA head of finance as saying that, “the move is an initiative by the mayor of Accra to help recover the revenue owed the assembly.”
This is really interesting. While it is irresponsible for any resident or business concern to refuse to pay their property rates, it is equally wrong for the AMA to continue to take residents and business concerns for granted, leaving duties which are typically the lot of the local authority to individual residents and businesses.
This must be interesting times in the life of the AMA. Hauling people before court for just one year’s default in property rate means that they mean business. But meaning business should also mean discharging their full obligations to those for whom they exist to serve. The AMA should now apply the same seriousness with which they are collecting property rates to tackling the number of problems that have been left unattended over the years in the interest of residents and business concerns who regularly pay their rates to the AMA.
Talk about the filth in Accra, the choked gutters, the mosquitoes that chase us out of our rooms no matter what efforts we put into keeping them away, the open gutters, the defecation on the beaches, the dark streets, the garbage that is left uncollected for weeks, the potholes found on major city streets, the deplorable access roads to our homes, our choked markets and lorry stations, the unkempt public cemeteries, the lack of public places of convenience in the city centre, the list goes on ad infinitum.
If as residents and business concerns, we discharge our obligations to the AMA each year, why are we denied good access roads to our homes and workplaces? In some areas in Accra, individuals are joining forces and resources to fix their own access roads and their street lights as if we do not have a local authority in place. This cannot happen in any advanced country and that is where we are heading as we claim the status of a middle-income country.
We pay our rates to the AMA and what do we get in return? As residents, we have to arrange for our own garbage collection. Elsewhere, arrangements for garbage collection is not the business of individual residents. Collection is regular and garbage bins are not left lined up and flowing over.
As residents of Accra who pay property rates regularly to the local authority, some of the individuals who have had to construct the access roads to their homes have also gone to the extent of constructing their own drains and covering them at their own cost. Compare this to what the AMA gives to its residents. Gaping drains in Accra have been the primary cause of filth, mosquito breeding and flooding in some areas.
But the taking of residents for granted by the AMA does not stop there. Every time I go to the Kaneshie market, I have cause to question why the market women pay tolls but do not receive complementary services. The place is overcrowded, filthy and quite dark, even in bright sunshine. I have never been to their washrooms but one can only hope that their places of convenience are decent enough.
Talking about places of convenience, do we have public places of convenience in the city centre or any part of the city, especially lorry parks, where shoppers or visitors can use if the need arises? How about public gardens and places where people can go and sit just to unwind? Accra is said to be a millennium city; this implies modernity and beauty.
The AMA could do more with the rates they collect, and also give Accra a facelift.
The airport city is coming up nicely and the high rise buildings are giving the city a new look. What the AMA needs to do fast is to move the hawkers who congregate near the airport and make that street a no-go area for hawking. It is an eyesore.
I have never had to use any of the public cemeteries but I am told families are charged ground rent to bury their relatives. If that is the case, then I cannot understand why the Osu and Awudome cemeteries, for example, have been left so unkempt and weedy. Cemeteries elsewhere are kept neatly and those who want to visit the graveside of their loved ones can do so.
The AMA’s responsibilities to residents are many. The Ghanaian, being non-confrontational by nature, has accommodated and taken on board services that the assembly should rather be rendering to its residents. It is perhaps time for us to get streetwise and wake up to demand what is due us from the AMA as they also demand their pound of flesh. We exist together and they are because we are.
By Vicky Wireko
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