The Minister for Sanitation and Water Resources, Cecilia Dapaah has said “Accra is generally clean” in contrast to backlash that the Akufo-Addo led government has failed in its promise to keep the country’s capital clean.

She made the assertion in Parliament in answering a question posed to her on sanitation in the country.

The Minister mentioned that, in spite of the numerous challenges being faced, the government is putting in place measures to keep its promise of making Accra the cleanest city in Africa.

“There will always be challenges as the population grows and people migrate. Yes, there are challenges and I extensively brought to the Floor some of these challenges when I briefed the House. For instance, the honourable member was speaking about last week’s rain, the plastics are under the Ministry of Science, Environment, and Technology and the dredging is also under the ambit of the Ministry of Works and Housing.”

“The Minister for the Works and Housing went around the city and visited the Aslyum down area and I know he is also giving contracts for drain dredging and I believe the Minister is capable of finding the needed solution but generally, I can say Accra is clean,” she said.

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“Cleanest city in Africa”

The President, Nana Akufo-Addo had promised to tackle sanitation issues in the country and make Accra the cleanest city by the end of his term.

Touching on some initiative being implemented to achieve the goal of making Accra the cleanest city in Africa, President Akufo-Addo said during the State of the Nation’s Address last year that, his government had increased the capacity of solid waste its manages from 16 per cent to 53 per cent.

He added that the government in 2018 also constructed more than 35,000 household toilets to deal with open defecation.

Despite these, critics of the NPP government have argued that Akufo-Addo has failed in fulfilling his promise, as the sanitation issues in Accra persists

Ms Cecilia Dapaah however stated that Akufo-Addo is still keen on fully actualizing the promise of a cleaner Accra city.

“His Excellency the president is so serious with this call to all of us, to make Accra the cleanest and Ghana a clean country. He has put the Ministry of Sanitation and Natural Resource on the top priority list of government to be able to access the budget that we need,” she added.