The Prisons Service in Winneba is embarking on an exercise to arrest and get residents who dump refuse in the drain and openly defecate along the beaches prosecuted.

This comes on the back of a report by Media General as part of its sanitation campaign – #GarbageOut – that showed some residents an area place in Winneba resorting to using the beach behind the prisons quarters as a place of convenience.

It was revealed in the report that residents refused to use the public toilet sited close to the beach, complaining it cost too much to use the place.

Following the report which aired on TV3, the prisons service said they “felt bad” that such a thing was happening at their backyard.

Speaking in an interview with Johnnie Hughes on 3FM’s Community Connect, Prisons officer DSP Cecilia Aggrey-Bluwey, said, “All efforts to stop them proved futile”, adding that perpetrators verbally abuse officers who attempt to stop them.

“They pay deaf ears to all our efforts to correct them. As hard as we tried; they also develop other ways and means to have access to the place.

“We have made several reports to the Municipal Assembly and there were other task forces that assisted us. We are trying. Even midnight, they will find their way,” she explained.

The Prisons Officer sounded a note of caution to the general public against using the beaches as a final resting place for human wastes.

“What we have decided to do this time round is that, every day, we will get our guards and officers who will be guarding that place and try to drive them away.

“If they still insist, we will arrest them, we will send them to the law court and when they start fining them or imprisoning them, I think the practice will stop.”

The prison facility was initially a fort left behind by the colonial administration in the mid 1840’s.

The facility had been abandoned until the Ghana Prison Service decided to put it into use.