Ga East Municipal Assembly Holds Clean-Up, Disinfection And Enforces COVID-19 Protocols

The Ga East Municipal Assembly (GEDA) has taken its turn of the second round of the National COVID-19 Disinfection Exercise which was launched on Sunday.

As part of efforts to sanitize the municipality against the spread of the COVID-19 and other diseases, the assembly with the support of the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development in partnership with Zoomlion commenced clean-up, disinfection, and fumigation of various markets and lorry parks.

Areas that benefitted from this critical national sanitation assignment included the Dome Market, Kwabenya Market, Taifa-Burkina Market among others.

The assembly with the support of the Ghana police officers also used the opportunity to punish some recalcitrant members of the public who flouted the basic COVID-19 protocol of wearing nose masks.

Those who found culpable were made to instantly buy nose mask from hawkers while others were ordered to do hard labour by cleaning gutters and sweeping around the Dome Market.

Briefing media men about the exercise, Public Relations Officer of the Ga East Municipal Assembly, Mr. Okunyin Boaz Orlan-Hackman, revealed that the police came to augment the enforcement of COVID-19 directives by mounting checkpoints throughout the municipality.

"The result has been very good because people are made to buy the face mask instantly and are forced to wear them. We have also seen the police punishing people by making them clean the gutters and sweep the markets," he said.

He was confident that this will go a long way to help curb the indiscipline associated with the observance of the COVID-19 protocols.

On his part, the Head of Sanitation, Ga East Municipal Assembly, Mr. Charles Asabre, said the assembly already embarks on similar sanitation-related interventions periodically but this exercise, in particular, has become critical due to the COVID-19.

"This clean-up exercise was meant to decrease the volume of waste that is created in our markets and further increase the waste collection rate. Usually, clean-ups are done per market but this one is happening across the municipality. Actually we are supposed to have monthly clean-ups in line with the National Sanitation Day but this one being done today is a special one due to the spread of the COVID-19," Charles Asabre pointed out.