Henry Quartey
The ‘Operation Clean Your Frontage’ project flags off tomorrow towards which end the Greater Accra Regional Minister Henry Quartey continued his engagement with germane stakeholders.
Last Friday he met with representatives of financial institutions, the media and others and laid before them the intricacies of the project.
An enforcement team is being trained to deal with the task, the remuneration of which personnel he has assured would not be an encumbrance.
The personnel, he added, would be bereft of partisan coloration and cannot operate as state security actors, their task being purely ensuring that the frontages of residences and workplaces are kept tidy.
Also incorporated in the Accra project, the regional minister told his guests at the Movenpick Hotel in Accra, is the ensuring of discipline in the streets of the city.
While commercial motorbikes otherwise known as Okada would not be stopped from plying their occupation, he said they would be made to abide by road traffic regulations such as respecting traffic lights, wearing crash helmets and not carrying more than one pillion rider.
“We are not in business to be chasing Okadas. We are only interested in ensuring that they abide by the road traffic regulations. Red means red and green means green that’s all,” he said.
The regional minister denied speculations that the reclaimed Agbogbloshie land is being allocated by the Greater Accra Regional Coordinating Council.
He did say that refuse is being dumped on the site “and so we plan walling the 18 acre land. The RCC is not giving out land to anybody. Only the Ministry of Health has been given some acres of the land to construct a hospital.” The community, he gave the assurance, would benefit from whatever project is put up there.
Appropriate bylaws with the support of the Attorney General and both sides of Parliament have been enacted and gazetted to ensure that the project succeeds in the component MMDAs in the regions, he said.
Landlords under the bylaws are required to ensure the cleanliness of the frontage of their houses and the middle part of the adjoining streets.
Transfer sites for the reception of garbage are going to be in place to which motor tricycles would empty their contents within their assemblies.
Of significance in his address was the announcement of the acquisition of compaction trucks for the assemblies to facilitate the management of garbage in the region. These trucks when they finally arrive in the country, he added, would be distributed to the various assemblies among other facilities.
Such tricycles would be registered and restricted to their assemblies, he said, adding that this way the dangers posed by them would be reduced.
The DVLA, he hinted, have been contacted to register such tricycles for the purpose of ensuring that they operate within the assemblies they belong and for the purpose of conveying garbage to the transfer sites.
On the Abossey Okai spare parts market, he said that plans are on to relocate the traders to Afienya.
The greening of Accra as an integral part of the city project, he said, is being considered in collaboration with other entities.
Some 400 National Service Personnel, he announced, would be engaged to man a control room for the monitoring of the project.
Fifty thousand T-shirts for the promotion of the Clean Accra project, he added, would be distributed, and these he said are without partisan touch.
By A.R. Gomda