By Collins Sarkodieh 
The highly publicised national cleaning campaign aimed at fixing our blocked drainage systems has officially wrapped up, but it has left a very messy problem behind. While thousands of citizens and security personnel successfully cleared choked gutters across Greater Accra, huge mountains of black mud, plastic rubbish, and wet sand have been left sitting directly on the roadsides.
The emergency initiative was ordered by President John Dramani Mahama to protect local communities from heavy seasonal downpours. However, the initial success of the post-flood recovery effort is facing serious backlash because municipal authorities have failed to execute the final step, which is carrying the scooped filth completely away to the final dumpsite.
The structural problem with this massive two-day exercise is that the dirt was only shifted from the bottom of the drains onto the walking pavements. A quick tour through heavy trading zones within Ablekuma North, Ablekuma South, and the central Accra Metropolitan Assembly area shows that almost every major street is now lined with long, smelly heaps of excavated waste.
Market women and local store owners are furious because these heavy blockades are directly stopping customers from accessing their shops. To make matters worse, the damp mud is drying up rapidly under the hot sun, creating heavy clouds of dust and unpleasant odours that make selling food or clothes completely uncomfortable.
The biggest logical fear shared by residents is the highly unpredictable West African weather. If a single heavy rainfall hits the capital before the waste management trucks arrive, every single bit of the loose roadside sand and plastic trash will easily wash right back into the empty gutters.
If that happens, all the heavy sweat, closed market hours, and millions of state cedis spent mobilizing cleaning gear over the weekend will be entirely in vain. Local traders are aggressively calling on their Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs) to deploy their compaction trucks immediately before the next dark clouds gather over the city.
Beyond the collection delay, this national exercise has highlighted the biggest missing link in our country’s environmental setup, the absolute lack of public waste bins. A person can walk from Accra Central all the way to the Circle interchange without finding a single standard municipal trash can to drop a empty water sachet inside.
When the government orders a major cleanup but fails to provide permanent waste infrastructure on our streets, the public is naturally forced back into bad habits. To achieve a truly clean city, our local assemblies must stop relying only on occasional weekend communal labor and invest heavily in placing durable, covered trash bins at every single bus stop and market corner.
Also Read: Mahama Orders Military to Dredge Waterways, Proposes Monthly National Clean-Up Days