Ghana's Sanitation; A problem of Attitude

The President of the republic Nana Akufo Addo promised to make Accra the cleanest city in Africa. Looking at measures put in place to fulfil this grandiose promise, it'll be fare to say that the promise was nothing but a mere rhetoric. There's no doubt that Accra could become the cleanest city in Africa but the truth is that, the system put in place where landfill sites and waste recycling plants are not enough shows our unpreparedness to this laudable call. For Accra to be the cleanest city , government must provide dustbins at vantage areas and public places where it'll be monitored to make sure that it is taken anytime if full. Yet, there are measure are not enough if the citizenry are not discipline attitudinally.

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Poor sanitation has increasingly become a huge problem suffocating Ghanaians and the situation seems to be getting worse everyday. Despite the obvious problems of administrative deficiencies, the bulk of the problem and it causes are squarely that of attitudinal problem that cannot be blamed on leadership. Poor attitude of the ordinary citizen towards the environment is something that cannot be ignored if indeed we want to make Accra the cleanest city in Africa. Citizens are seen disposing refuse into gutters more especially in the rainy season which choke gutters and leads to flooding. Our mental attitudes towards littering shows how indiscipline we're as a people. Many a time, people liter around with they mindset that the government pays people to clean as their job. This attitude of indiscipline towards the environment is deeply rooted in our society and culture and would take a long time and conscious education to do away with it.

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Coupled with poor attitude is poor law enforcement of sanitation laws. Gone are the days when sanitary inspectors popularly known as "Samasama" enforced local laws on sanitation. But today, the weakening of our institutions and lack of political will to prosecute culprits has lead to our current situation here we're choked by refuse.

Lack of civic education in our schools, media, worship centers etc. has breed citizens who are unconcern about their environment and how the problem of sanitation can lead to death, cholera, flooding etc. There's the need for serious civic education on our role as citizens to bequeath unto the next generations an environment and society that is clean and free from pollution.
I believe if we change our mindset and attitude towards the environment, we'll be able to solve the problem of sanitation in Ghana.
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