Regional News of Thursday, 21 August 2014

Source: The Chronicle

Filth takes over Takoradi

Takoradi which prides itself with the accolade the ‘Best Comes from the West’ is gradually loosing this pride to nothing, but filth, due to the inability of the city authorities to manage the sanitation situation.

At the time that the deadly Cholera disease has raised its ugly head in Accra as a result of filth, Takoradi seems to have opened wide it arms welcoming the arrival of the deadly disease.

Every corner in Takoradi one treks there is a heap of waste waiting to be evacuated. At the Kwesimintsim traffic lights, a heap of waste has piled up for weeks waiting to be cleared.

For now, Takoradi which is the only ‘Oil City’, undoubtedly, is becoming a hub of sanitary indiscipline, where everyone chooses to dump rubbish anywhere. The situation has become so because the center of the city (Market Circle), which is earmarked for waste disposal and evacuation is full up, and for three days the mountain-like heap of rubbish has not been cleared.

As a result, individuals have resorted to the indiscriminate disposal of waste they generate. When this Reporter, for three consecutive days, visited Market Circle, the heap of waste was equivalent to a mountain.

The heap had reach it peak waiting for evacuation, but it does not seem to be coming anytime soon.

The stench coming out of the heap of waste poses a danger to the health of the market women trading nearby.

The Regional Minister, Paul Evans Aidoo, once had to compel the Mayor of the Sekondi Takoradi Metropolitan Assembly (STMA), Anthony Cudjoe, to embark on an exercise to rid the city of filth.

The Minister, then addressing an Assembly meeting, expressed worry over the state of filth in the Metropolis.

The STMA consequently embarked on the exercise to rid the city of filth, but three month after the exercise, waste has again engulfed the metropolis with the accompanying stench. For now, it has become clear that the STMA has aided in Takoradi losing its glory of sanitation management becoming a place of but filth and rubbish.