IMANI Africa, a policy think tank organisation, has kicked against Government’s policy of organising regular communal cleaning exercises at the various metropolitan, municipal and district assemblies.
Mr Casely Ato Coleman, Fellow, IMANI Africa Centre for Policy Education, said in many of the clean cities in the advanced world, they do not undertake communal cleaning because the systems work.
“Communal cleaning is a sign of systems failure and we must stop the focus on communal cleaning because it is not sustainable. We must solve the challenges from a systems-wide organisational design approach,” Mr Coleman stated in his inaugural lecture as a Fellow of IMANI Africa Centre For Policy Education.
He explained that if systems were working there would be no need to organised communal cleaning in the country. The lecture was on the theme, “Ghana’s Sanitation Policy and Strategy Has Failed: Winning the War against Waste and Filth”.
It was attended by representative of civil society organisations in the water, sanitation and hygiene sector, policy makers, waste management companies, metropolitan, municipal and district assemblies, academics, members of the diplomatic community, development partners and donor agencies.
Mr Coleman said Ghana also needed strong values driven leaders who would promote a culture of accountability across all three levels of governance that is national, regional and local government to ensure policy alignment in budgeting, planning and measurement of results.
“We need leaders who consistently apply corrective action when performance expectations are not met by all actors involved in the waste management value chain.
“We need strong leadership that ensures enforcement of environmental regulations and laws on sanitation which are clean.
“We need leaders at the assemblies who must have business acumen, take risks and must be proactive and innovative in identifying economic opportunities rather than relying heavily on central government especially when there is donor fatigue to fund sanitation related initiatives due to corruption in the sector,” he said.
He urged the President of the nation to set clear performance targets for all the key leaders in the sanitation value chain and fire those who do not meet expectations.
He cited the Local Government Act 462, the Environmental Sanitation Policy of 1999, which was revised in 2000, and 2010, the National Environmental Sanitation Strategy and Action Plan of 2010 and the Strategic Environmental Sanitation Investment Plan (SESIP 2012).
He said sanitation management required joint accountability and responsibility from both citizens as right holders and government as duty bearer to ensure that citizens lived in a safe, clean and healthy environment.
Mr Coleman said sanitation just like security, began with the individual in the same way that they ought to be alert with their personal security.
Mr Franklin Cudjoe, Founding President and Chief Executive Officer, IMANI Africa, said sanitation unlike human rights, had to be worked upon.
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