The Deputy Regional Minister of Savannah Region, Samuel Yeyu Tika, has warned that the region will deal with any assembly which will fail to ensure strict supervision and monitoring of evacuated dumping sites in the region.
The exercise was part of an ongoing emergency national refuse evacuation exercise being undertaken by the Ministry of Sanitation and Water Resources (MSWR) to rid the country of aged dumping sites.
The minister said, as part of the assignment, each region needed to identify three dumping sites and ensure that these sites were emptied.
He said “it is the vision of the President to ensure that Ghana becomes the cleanest nation in Africa and that this exercise is part of that big agenda.”
It behoves us as a government to ensure that we evacuate all filthy sites in the region because a healthy people is a healthy nation,” he averred.
“As the mouthpiece of the government in the region, I want to call on all the people of Damongo to support the ‘Clean Ghana Agenda’ by contributing their quotas in ensuring that henceforth they will dump refuse at designated sites.
Tika also called on the media to help in advocating for the Clean Ghana Agenda and also educate the people on the need to observe personal hygiene and management of waste in their environs.
He said the assembly will set up a taskforce to ensure that they police the dumping sites so that people will not throw waste indiscriminately but into stationed waste containers which will be provided by the assembly.
The Municipal Chief Executive for West Gonja, Saeed Muhuzu Jibril, said both traders and the people of Damongo Central Market had been battling with refuse at the Old Market dumping site for the past twenty years.
According to him, for the past five years, the assembly had been struggling to evacuate the dumping site but to no avail “so we thank Allah for today’s intervention from the MSWR.”
He said measures had been put in place to ensure that after the dumpsite had been cleared, the place would be monitored by the assembly, including planting refuse containers at the dumping sites, policing the area and also promoting prompt evacuation.
The Assemblyman for the Attributo Electoral Area, Alhassan Adams, could not hide his joy over the exercise, expressing that “this is a relief to all traders who trade at the market.”
He said henceforth, the assembly will put someone in charge to manage the place.
The three sites that were evacuated were the Old Market dumpsite, the Galamsey Station dumpsite and the Zongo dumpsite all located in Damongo.