Unemployed sanitation officers question ‘clean Accra’ agenda

Some unemployed sanitation officers across the country have questioned President Akufo Addo’s commitment to making Accra the cleanest city in Africa.

They say the government has not posted over four hundred of them despite having spent huge sums of monies in their training.

The sanitation officers, who graduated from school three years ago, have been forced to resort to menial jobs.

Citi News’ Marie-Franz Fordjoe interacted with some of the really frustrated sanitation officers.

Read: Women can’t handle ‘tough’ Sanitation Ministry – Yamoah Ponkoh

“I have been hustling up and down, no food no water, your parents supported you to go to school and you finish, they expect you to be working but you are sitting at home being a burden on them every day,” one of the graduates said.

“For me, I am engaged in a petty trading at the market site, I have been pushing trucks all over, here and there, no job for us,” another said.

The unemployed sanitation officers say they have tried all they can to have their issues resolved but the government has not responded to them.

“We have tried several times. This year, we went for a demonstration and we have heard no responses from them [government]”

Read: Government secures $45m to deliver sanitation services

Last Month, the Local Government Service said it required more staff to enforce the country’s sanitation laws.

It said although it has received clearance to recruit over 1,000 staff, very few of them are sanitation officers who will be deployed to various parts of the country to improve sanitation.

Speaking in a Citi News interview, the Head of the Local Government Service, Dr. Nana Ato Arthur, said they require about 400 environmental officers to undertake the activity.

Africa’s Cleanest city’

The government, according to President Akufo-Addo, seeks to make Accra the cleanest city in Africa by the end of 2020.

Read: Sanitation Ministry launches data collection app

In line with this, the AMA set up five sanitation courts within the city to deal with sanitation offenders.

President Nana Akufo-Addo, as part of the National Sanitation Campaign, announced several initiatives in 2017 to achieve the target.

Source: citinewsroom.com