Alhaji Akape made the call in an interview with the Ghana News Agency (GNA) on the sidelines of a capacity building workshop for officials and community leaders at Kasoa.  This was after Mr Paul Nutsugah, Central Regional Environmental Health Officer, had delivered a paper on Results-Oriented Monitoring and Evaluation of Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) to stakeholders comprising officials of ASEMA, Area Council and Unit Committee members, among others.

The presentation was to arm the participants to understand the statue basis for monitoring and evaluation in Ghana and linkage between policy, budget, and plan, among others.  It was also to enable the participants to know the meaning of basic concepts in monitoring and evaluation and to understand results-oriented matrix and reporting.

Intervention Forum (IF), a non-governmental organization, and its partnership Voice for Change (V4C) programme, organized the evidence-based capacity building meeting in collaboration with the ASEMA, to sensitize communities in the Municipality to adopt proper sanitation and hygiene practices.

The Municipality faces huge challenges dealing with the collection and disposal of huge volumes of waste generated daily in the Municipal capital.  Alhaji Akape lauded the IF and its V4C partners for their regular education on sanitation and hygiene, saying it had helped to instil proper environmental practices in the citizenry.

“This programme, as you can see, is a very important one because in the Awutu Senya East Municipal Assembly, one of our key problems is sanitation. So anybody who comes to collaborate with the Assembly to fight waste collection is always welcome.  “We hope that this programme will help our staff to improve on their work and also help us to do more in the area of sanitation,” he stated.

The MCD indicated that, apart from the contributions from IF and the V4C programme, the Assembly would also do a lot of education because it had seen that a lot of the people did not understand their role with regard to sanitation.

According to him, a lot of the filth or waste was being generated by the people who care very little about how to deal with them.  “They believe that it is the Assembly that should do everything but that should not be the case. We all are supposed to collaborate- those who generate the waste and we as an assembly; we will find a way of sending the waste to the final disposal site.”’

With regard to the Assembly’s decision to prosecute offenders, Alhaji Akape said the ASEMA had always wanted to use this as a last resort. “We always want to use that as the last resort because some of the people do not understand, so we want to do more education before the issue of arrest comes in; then it is in order. But if you don’t do a lot of education and you go, they will think their interest is not of priority to you.

‘’We will do more of education. But some of them have already been sent to court for disregarding previous warnings. You give them deadline and when they refuse to comply, we have no alternative than to send them to court,” he stated.

The MCD was however satisfied that the measures the Assembly was taking were having a positive impact on the people. “At most of the places where we have sent people to court, the people are working hard to make sure refuse are not left unattended to,” he added.