President John Dramani Mahama has called for a sustained national effort to improve sanitation and prevent future flooding, urging Ghanaians to change their attitudes towards waste disposal as the country recovers from the recent floods that devastated parts of Accra.
Speaking after participating in a clean-up exercise at Alajo on Friday, the first day of the government’s two-day National Cleaning Day campaign, the President said the destruction caused by the floods should serve as a wake-up call for citizens and authorities to adopt lasting measures to keep drains and communities clean.
“The floods have been devastating, but we must show that we are a resilient nation and we can bounce back even better,” he said. “We’re not going to be like the vulture who says that when the rain stops, he’ll repair his roof.”
The President said the exercise at the Alajo drain had revealed the scale of the sanitation challenge, noting that the drains were heavily clogged with silt, plastics and household waste.
“There are two problems in it. There’s silt, and then there’s also plastics and household waste. You find in a drain like this there are even building blocks, old furniture, dining tables – everything you can find in that drain,” he said.
He stressed that indiscriminate dumping of refuse into drains remained one of the major contributors to flooding and called on the public to adopt responsible waste disposal practices.
“One, we must change our attitudes and stop the reckless dumping of things into the drain. The drains are not garbage bins. If you want to dispose of something, you know how to dispose of it. We have skip trucks that leave containers all over the city. Just go and throw your garbage into the skips, and the truck will come and pick it up,” he said.
President Mahama acknowledged that the two-day nationwide exercise would not be enough to completely clear the affected drains but announced plans to institutionalise regular community clean-up exercises across the country.
“Two days are not enough to finish this work. But we’re going to institute it so that at least one day every month, all of us should come out and clean our surroundings,” he said.
He said the initiative was intended to revive the country’s traditional communal sanitation culture, arguing that rapid urbanisation had contributed to the erosion of shared responsibility for keeping communities clean.
“That is what our traditional values were about. We were taught to keep a clean environment. But when we all leave our hometowns and come to the cities, because of the anonymity of urbanisation, we think that nobody watches us. So we dump those values, and we live in filth. We must change that attitude,” he stated.
The President also disclosed that the government had begun releasing funds to support longer-term flood mitigation efforts beyond the clean-up campaign.
He said the Minister for Finance had already released US$150 million for activities including dredging streams and drains, adding that the Ghana Armed Forces would continue the desilting exercise after the National Cleaning Day campaign ends.
“I’m also asking the Minister of Finance. He’s already released US$150 million to help with flood mitigation. That is the dredging of the streams and all that. The military will continue that exercise even after we have finished this two-day cleanup,” he said.
To improve the efficiency of the exercise, President Mahama announced plans to procure additional heavy-duty equipment for the military to remove silt and debris cleared from drains.
“We also have to get specialised machines like backhoes to take the silt that we have taken out of the drains and put it into dump trucks to take it away. We’re going to get some more backhoes for the military so that all the garbage and the silt that we have taken out of the drains will be properly disposed of,” he said.
He warned that failure to remove the accumulated waste from drain banks would undermine the clean-up effort, as subsequent rains could wash the debris back into the waterways.
“Otherwise, if we don’t do that, what we would have done would be in vain because when the rains come, it will just wash all those silt and garbage back into the drain,” he added.
The President expressed appreciation to members of the security services, traditional authorities, local leaders and residents who participated in the exercise, singling out the Ga Mantse, King Tackie Teiko Tsuru II, and other traditional leaders for supporting the campaign across the capital.
The two-day National Cleaning Day exercise was launched by the government in response to the recent flooding that affected several communities in Accra, with authorities seeking to improve drainage systems and strengthen public participation in environmental sanitation.
