The presidential clean-up exercise has come and gone leaving in its trail more filth on the streets than before it.
It is amazing the success rating the Ghana Journalists Association (GJA) awarded the exercise when, in our opinion and others, the task was hurriedly done, accounting therefore for the glaring challenges it has left behind in many suburbs of the city.
Perhaps the GJA based its marking scheme on the number of uncollected garbage lining the streets of some parts of Accra.
Perhaps it was a symbolic exercise to present the authorities as swiftly responding to an environmental situation after failing to live up to the expectation of obviating further flooding in the nation’s capital as promised in 2024.
As we compose this commentary, the streets of Accra Newtown are lined up with heaps of sand and assorted garbage scooped from the uncovered gutters of the suburb, waiting for evacuation. There are similar eyesores in other parts of the city, which makes us wonder whether serious planning went into the two-day exercise.
We have taken note of the President’s order that transfer stations be immediately opened to take care of the mounting garbage in the city. If the stations were inactive, there was a reason for that which can only be addressed not of course through a presidential diktat.
To make it look like the flooding was occasioned by the choked gutters only is to triviliase the drainage problem in the nation’s capital. It goes beyond this simple reasoning.
Many residents had to contend with strange loads of garbage swept to their doorsteps by the floodwaters. While some of these residents waited in vain for the poorly coordinated evacuation of the garbage by a few trucks and loaders, others after living with the filth for some days had to pay for alternative arrangements.
No wonder an interagency blame-game prevailed as each of these state entities sought to exonerate themselves from the glaring failings.
The Local Government Minister struggled to exonerate himself when by and large management of such publicity stunt exercises fall within his ambit.
The 2024 promise by the then Candidate John Mahama to collapse the Sanitation Ministry and transfer its terms of reference to the Local Government Ministry is still fresh in our memories.
The collapse was done and the transfer of terms of reference duly carried out. The Local Government Minister must take responsibility for the accompanying lapses.
We shall take no excuse for broken down District Road Improvement Programme (DRIP) equipment just a few years after they were acquired and deployed to the Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs).
These equipment were largely unseen during the clean-up exercise. Have they found their way to the country’s El Dorado?
Such one-off clean-up exercise without the accompanying dumping trucks and loaders cannot achieve the necessary cleaning of the city and, above all, in the absence of a dumping site.
A success? No. Failure? Of course yes.