It is becoming clear that the Accra Metropolitan Assembly’s ability to rid the city of filth is somewhat linked to how it is tackling street hawking and petty trading in the Central Business District (CBD). Street hawking and its impact on the beautification of the capital city cannot be underestimated. The AMA is facing a myriad problems currently and the city authorities need strategic thinking to be able to surmount the task ahead.
Lately, the CBD has been engulfed in heaps of garbage and there appears to be no way one can move about at the place without chancing upon heaps of garbage or the obstruction of petty traders along the streets. Admittedly, the filth isn’t just an Accra problem; our entire country looks dirty. All major towns and cities are being swallowed up by heaps of stinking refuse.
Over the years, Ghanaians have been encountering many metro chief executives. At least, Stanley Nii Adjiri Blankson and Alfred Okoe Vanderpuije ring a bell. We have also heard about the administrations of E.T Mensah, Nat Nunoo Amarteifio, Salifu Amankwah Addoquaye Addo, among others. They all tried to fight canker and clear the streets of petty traders (hawkers). The result is history, otherwise we would not be talking about it today.
The repercussions are there for all to see today because the streets are still full of hawkers and the garbage continues to live with us.
Selling on the streets by hawkers is becoming a normal way of life. We say so because chasing them out with threats of court suits or brute and callous measures have failed to address the challenge, especially due to political maneuvres by the government of the day, most of the time.
The problem of street hawing over the years has been steeped in the general Ghanaian attitude of sitting and staring as situations play out, only to pay a higher price to right the wrongs that were clearly avoidable – at the expense of the tax payer.
Would it not serve a better purpose to have registered hawkers to sell at particular points during particular times of the day? That would clearly keep the number of hawkers to a certain limit. The AMA can then convince them either to quit the streets for the markets with the assurances that their sales would not drop, as it were.
In some countries, authorities are taking a more positive view of informal trade as contributing to the economic life of the cities and engaging in more collaborative approaches to the recurrent cycles of eviction and return of hawkers. In Lima, Peru, in 2014, the City Council passed an ordinance giving the city authorities the responsibility for including street vendors in economic development, providing them with protection. From 1988 to 2003, Bogota’s mayor in Colombia implemented one of the most ambitious public space campaigns in Latin America, working with informal vendor unions to relocate them to the government – built markets, resulting in improved working conditions.
Through sustained dialogue and Public-Private Partnership to invest nearly $7 million of municipal funds and $60 million of private capital in some 50 shopping centres and markets available to vendors, Peruvian officials were able to relocate some 20,000 street vendors.
Comparatively, in Ghana, the subject is different. Municipal and district assemblies adopt Machiavellian tactics against street traders to resolving the mess, leading to clashes, attacks and humiliating events, largely, affecting the micro trader.
In taking a cue from best practices in other parts of the world, we urge the city authorities to adopt a more cordial relationship, and to create congenial environment to enable all micro traders to have space to do their business in peace and in dignity.