As part of activities to depoliticize issues of Sanitation and get people to accept that keeping a Community clean is a shared responsibility, the Upper East Regional Coordinating Council in partnership with the Inter-Party Committee, the Bolgatanga Municipal Assembly, CSOs and the Media, embarked on a Clean-up Exercise across the Municipality over the week end.
The Clean-up Exercise being an initiative of the Upper East Regional Minister, Hon. Paulina Abayage saw members of the various active Political Parties in the region cleaning the new and old markets, the main lorry park, some chocked gutters along some principal streets and swept other areas.
The participants also picked up plastics wastes which have become a major Sanitation problem in the Municipality.
In the past some attempts to instill the culture of regular Clean-Up Exercises in the Municipality, failed because, residents saw them as politically motivated, especially when the Clean-ups were occasionally led by political figures.
The Regional Minister in her attempt to depoliticize the Clean-Up Exercise and subsequent ones that will follow in 2019 and beyond, said, keeping a clean environment has been a culture passed from generation to generation and should not be seen as something new, her concern however was how fast the culture is being thrown away.
She wondered what the present generation will be teaching the next generation about Sanitation if people do not keep their environments clean and rather, keep looking up to a District Assembly or an Organization to clean their environment for them.
“It is our individual and group responsibility to ensure that our environment is always clean. Cleanliness is next to Godliness and that is what our forefathers practiced a culture, it is expected of us to also practice same, just us we up hold other cultural practices our forefathers handed over to us.
One problem that I want to talk about is the littering with plastics waste. Now we all drink sachet water, my advise is that, any time we drink sachet water or buy something and we are given rubber, we keep it and only drop it in a dust bin in town or our homes. Littering the environment will affect all.
If Cholera comes, it will not discriminate because am a Minister, or a member of a certain Political party, it will affect anyone with a dirty environment.” She said.
The Upper East Regional Chairman of the Convention Peoples Party, Alhaji Huseini Ibrahim who also participated in the Clean-up Exercise with his members said the Party and its members are committed to the Clean-up Exercise and wants a repeat of it from time to time, till cleanliness becomes a cultural practice in the Bolgatanga Municipality again.
The Regional Youth Organizer of the National Democratic Congress, Abraham Lambon called for a continuation of the exercise even after the NPP has left office, saying, a similar one was started during the era of Professor Atta Mills but died off due to lack of commitment to the Clean-up Exercises in the Bolgatanga Municipality.
The Upper East Regional Youth Organizer of the ruling New Patriotic Party, Latif Solomon was happy with the turnout, especially the presence of the other Political Parties and their supporters, saying it is the beginning of the formation of a united front in the region, for the sole purpose of developing the area.
It is expected that, the Bolgatanga Municipal Assembly, will adopt the Clean-Up Exercises and get the people of the area practicing on weekly basis.
From: Ebo Bruce-Quansah, Bolgatanga