The sugarcane seller was caught cutting and packaging  sugarcane sticks for sale with profuse sweat on her arms in an unhygienic environment.

She was found to be operating without a health certificate and was subsequently taken away by the AMA guards.

Where she was operating is a known sugarcane processing centre which serves as a distribution centre for most of the packaged sugarcane pieces sold in the Kaneshie area.

Concerning the offences of the corn mill operators, the Director of the Accra Metropolitan Assembly Public Health, Florence Kuukyi said the offenders were operating in a filthy environment that poses danger to public health. She, however, ordered the closure of their shops.

The situation compelled the health inspectors to educate the people on good environmental practices.

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See more photos below:

According to the Assembly, over 1,400 households in STMA do not have toilet facilities, forcing 702 households to resort to open defecation.

This was revealed at the launch of the campaign in Sekondi Wednesday morning.

Speaking during the launch of the project at the Assembly premises in Sekondi, on Wednesday, the Mayor for STMA, Abdul Mumin Issah noted that people are still engaging in open defecation at seashores and in the bushes despite the numerous efforts by the assembly to discourage the phenomena of open defecation.

“The habit of some residents deliberately dumping waste into drains, roadsides, and other unauthorized places continues to choke drains, causing flooding in the Metropolis. Insanitary conditions at homes, eateries, markets, transport terminals and other workplaces continue to spread communicable diseases like cholera, malaria and typhoid among the public, and in some cases, causing the death of precious citizens,” he added.

Again, he said the Assembly arrested 176 people in 2021 for open defecation; 89 in 2022, and 40 at the end of the third quarter of 2023, adding that this year alone, 27 houses without toilets and 30 other sanitation-related nuisances have been prosecuted successfully.

“We cannot allow this sorry situation to continue in our Metropolis, it is against this background that the STMA with support from the implementation of Twin-Cities in Sustainable Partnership Project (TCSPP), is partnering with JOY NEWS and selected local radio stations to launch a campaign dubbed “Operation Clean Your Surroundings” to promote good hygiene practices. The STMA learnt this lesson from the Accra project with JOY NEWS dubbed “Operations Clean Your Frontage,” he added.

Mr Mumin Issah explained that, the aim of the campaign is to enforce the Assembly’s environmental sanitation by-laws and encourage citizens to take responsibility for their actions. It is also to raise awareness of cleanliness, hygiene, waste management, and environmental preservation through media coverage and the deployment of a task force.

“The campaign will educate, arrest, prosecute, name, and shame sanitation-related offenders across the Metropolis. We ultimately aim to collectively change certain socio-cultural practices from the community members towards environmental sanitation.

“I, therefore, have the privilege to this day declare the Sekondi-Takoradi Metropolitan Assembly and JOY NEWS “Operation Clean Your Surroundings” campaign duly launched,” he explained.

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The Metro Health Inspectors, under the Joycleanghana Campaign, had gone to the lorry station to educate drivers and passengers on how to maintain sound sanitation practices.

However, during their inspection, they discovered that the public urinal in the yard, produced an offensive odour while a nearby garage was full of smelly refuse.

According to the Ghana Road Transport Union officials in charge of the station, water taps in the area had ceased flowing, thus affecting the smooth running of the urinals.

Below are photos from the scene:

But he will be left on his own shortly after arriving with his mum, who is now mentally challenged.

Little Ebenezer now roams the streets of Accra by day and joins other squatters to sleep at the underbridge of the Kwame Nkrumah interchange at night.

When sanitation officers of the AMA stormed the area to clear illegal occupants Wednesday, what he knew to be home went away too.

“I sleep under the overhead. My mother brought me from Sampa North in the Bono Region. But now I don’t go to school,” he narrated.

Several older squatters could be spotted sleeping on cardboards, piles of pavement bricks, and dirty clothes from a distance. Not even the rocks planted as spikes could stop them from occupying the pavements.

But why were they there?

“Everyone can sleep here because we are all hustlers,” one of them retorted when asked why he was at the underbridge.

Another one said, “I don’t have mother and father on this earth; that’s why I’ve chosen to be on the streets.”

But Ebenezer was younger, and so it was difficult to miss him. So why was he under the bridge on a Wednesday morning and not in school?

I will later find out his mum is mentally challenged, a reason little Ebenezer has been left roaming Accra’s perilous streets all by himself.

“I’m afraid a car will knock me down, but my family members are in Sampa North. So Rasta has been giving 1 cedi to buy food,” he explained.

The closest thing to a family Ebenezer knows in Accra is ‘Rasta’. So the 27-year-old himself, also homeless, goes about hustling to be able to give Eben 1 Ghana cedi for food. But they could go days without any proper food.

Rasta explained, “life is hard on the streets. I saw him and even got touched. So I decided that if I get the money, I’ll give him 1 cedi or 2 cedis. I try to keep him close by.”

Like Eben, hundreds of kids are roaming the streets of Accra in search of warmth and support from a society that is constantly failing them. For now, though, that’s all he has.

In 2017, the Gender Ministry launched a campaign to end streetism in Ghana.

The programme dubbed ‘#Operation Get off the Streets for a Better Life’ aimed to identify persons on the streets, profiling and integrating them with their parents, caregivers, families, and community in five years.

It was also to ensure that target groups are completely cleared from the streets.

The target groups included Kayayei, hawkers, children who are beggars, adult beggars, and those contracted to push physically challenged persons. The rest are persons with disabilities, persons with mental health problems, families on the streets, displaced persons (international migrants) and ‘begging contractors’.

But four years after it was launched, the menace of streetism seems to have worsened, with various civil society groups calling for renewed efforts towards the agenda.

A visit by the Joy Clean Ghana Campaign team together with the Health Directorate of the AMA to the Jamestown fishing community revealed some of the fishes are washed with what is a ‘thick brown porridge-like’ solution.

That aside, the team discovered human excreta a few metres away from the fish-smoking oven while some unconcerned mongers proceeded to do their businesses in such unhygienic conditions.

Head of Public Health Department of the AMA, Florence Kuukyi, perplexed by the situation, attributed their negligence to improper attitude towards health and sanitation in the area.

People here are very difficult to change; to get them to do the right thing becomes a very big issue.  If you do not take care, they will interfere with your work and even beat you, she explained.

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Additionally, leader of the Fishers Association, siding with the AMA’s claims said his community members were fond of disregarding their advice because they do not have mandate to put them in check.

We know of these unhealthy conditions but when we complain, our voices are not really heard. They don’t respect us because we are amongst them but if we are given the authority, we will be up to the task, he said.

Subsequently, the sanitation task force team served some fishers with a summon letter as others were cautioned to improve their health conditions.

In an attempt to avert the situation, the fisherfolks were invited to attend a sanitation health class organized by AMA.