Prisoners nationwide will be playing a central role in future National Sanitation Day (NSD) exercises, the local government minister has hinted.
The sector minister Julius Debrah is consulting with the Ghana Prisons Service for such possibility as he seeks ways to make the monthly clean-up exercise more effective and sustainable.
According to the minister, the inmates can be tasked to cart waste that has been collected from choked drains and gathered along the roads for a fee.
Speaking during a working visit to the Commissioner of Prisons, Ms Matilda Baffour-Awuah, in Accra, Debrah said everyone must make a conscious effort to make the exercise succeed.
The Local Government Ministry has been at the forefront of the programme which has attracted high profile personalities such as President John Mahama, Asantehene Otumfuo Osei Tutu II, the Accra Mayor Alfred Oko Vanderpuije and his peers across the country and the security agencies.
Meanwhile, the Head of Human Security at the National Security Secretariat, Brigadier General (rtd) Joseph Nunoo-Mensah has described the NSD as a waste of “valuable time.”
For him nothing has changed since the inception of the nationwide clean-up exercise held on the first Saturday of every month.
The former National Security Coordinator said the nation could save a lot if everyone makes it a habit to keep their surroundings clean instead of investing heavily in the NSD.
“Why don’t we provide dustbins and advice people to drop their litter and then we go and clean up wasting valuable time to do that, it doesn’t make sense?” Nunoo Mensah opined at the 70th Anniversary of the St. Paul’s Catholic Church over the weekend.
