Some fifteen households and shop owners, including the Market Queenmother of Abokobi in the Ga East Municipality of the Greater Accra Region, have been fined for sanitation offences.
The households and shop owners were issued with abatement notices and fined between GHC50.00 and GHC200.00 while the Queenmother and her management team were fined GHC500.00 for failing to check the dumping of refuse near the drain behind the market.
The Municipal Environmental Health Officer (MEHO) for the Ga East Municipal Assembly (GEMA), Charles Ampomah Asabre, disclosed this after the Municipal Assembly’s Sanitation Taskforce conducted a special exercise to enforce the sanitation by-laws.
The MEHO said the focus of the exercise was to check bad sanitation practices, educate the public on the sanitation by-laws of the Assembly, and raise revenue from the instant fines imposed on offenders.
The exercise was carried out around the Abokobi Market and lorry station where offenders were fined on the spot.
Traders who refused to pay had some of their items seized.
The Taskforce checked weedy areas, choked gutters, piling of refuse in and around homes and shops, as well as food vendors operating without health certificate.
The Queenmother, Madam Vida Marquaye, said the exercise would help put the traders in check and cause them to shun bad sanitation practices in the market and their homes, which the leadership had always advocated to no avail.
Source: GNA