THE Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA) on Wednesday night began a decongesting exercise to restore order and sanity in the conduct of public and private business in the city of Accra. It is regrettable that for the third time in two years the AMA has to deploy huge sums of money and other resources to clear the streets and pavements of undesirables.
That followed similar exercises that were carried out in February 2005 and in January this year. After the first exercise in 2005, the activities of hawkers and street vendors were missing from the central business district (CBA) of Accra and that resulted in the free flow of vehicular and human traffic.
Indiscipline in national life has affected the fabric of society to such an extent that the rules and regulations of the city authorities are no longer respected. In a society where the culture of impunity reigns, virtue becomes vice and anybody or authority that tries to instil sanity into the system is referred to as 'too known'.
The outcome of society's inability to deal with wrongdoing is the creation of popular slums such as Sodom and Gomorrah, Abuja, as well as structures along the rail road near the Graphic Road and at East Legon. It is the expectation of the DAILY GRAPHIC that all interest groups will take advantage of the decongesting exercise to overhaul the way Accra has been planned and how it will deliver infrastructure and efficient services to the residents.
The paper recalls that during the last decongesting exercise, it sought the views of all the political parties on the exercise and they all pledged their support for the AMA. But the fall out was quite interesting, as some of the politicians we spoke to were reprimanded for supporting an exercise to deprive their political support base of their livelihood.
Today, as the world is rapidly urbanising, it is not very clear whether or not our planet has the resources to cope with this relentless growth. Unfortunately, most of the growth is occurring in urban centres which are ill-equipped for the pace of change. For this reason, Accra is bursting at the seams, with unending traffic jams, poor sanitation, haphazard siting of structures, including building on water courses. The city has become an unhealthy place to live because of crowded conditions, poor sanitation, housing shortage and the rapid transmission of infectious diseases.
The DAILY GRAPHIC calls on all residents to lend the AMA their support to make the city a conducive place to live. We appreciate the economic hardships likely to be brought about by the decongesting exercise but for those whose property has been destroyed, we can only empathise with them, but for the hawkers, we encourage them to go to the Accra Pedestrians Mall and other markets where there are empty spaces. The streets and pavements are for motorists and pedestrians.
The earlier initiatives by the AMA, which the Kumasi, Tamale and the Shama Ahanta East Metropolitan assemblies adopted, failed following a directive from the Ministry of Local Government, Rural Development and Environment to the assemblies to give such exercises a human face and ensure that displaced traders were settled. In Accra, the hawkers returned to the streets eight months after the exercise and that necessitated the construction of a multi-billion cedi shopping mall at Odawna, near the Kwame Nkrumah Circle, by the AMA to resettle the displaced hawkers.
It is heart-warming that this time the Chief Executive of the AMA, Mr Stanley Nii Adjiri-Blankson, and his team are poised to succeed, provided the traditional authorities and the hawkers’ associations help in the efforts to rid the city of filth and stench. The assembly also needs media support for a successful exercise and it behoves all to change their attitude for the better.
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