The rubbish dump next door – Sra residents bemoan sickening dump, deplorable toilets

Correspondence from Eastern Region

Residents of Sra, a suburb of Somanya in the Eastern Region are wallowing in unsanitary conditions that dot the area.

The people live with unsightly waste disposal sites and places of convenience as heaps of refuse and deplorable toilet facilities pose an imminent danger to them.

Assemblyman for the Sra Electoral Area, Honourable Narh

Read full articleEric Agblazo said though he severally and personally sought audience with the Municipal Chief Executive (MCE) for Yilo Krobo, Ebenezer Tetteh Kupualor on the issue, nothing has been done despite persistent assurances by the Assembly Chief to address the problem.

“It is very bad since I became Assembly member for the area, I went to the MCE to talk about this very disheartening Borla (rubbish) situation in my electoral area several times…so he promised by then during the campaign in November that the Borla situation in my electoral area together with Okornya will be dealt with before the elections.

“But as you can see, we’ve had the elections, now we’re in the 8th month but we still have this disheartening Borla situation,” said the Assemblyman.
According to him, the MCE, in subsequent meetings assured him that the ministry of sanitation would address the problem for the people.

Honorable Agblao who described the situation as “very worrying” expressed fear that there could soon be an epidemic in the community.

“This Borla situation is very worrying, people are complaining every day and you and I know that this can cause airborne diseases or cholera or everything,” said the Assemblyman.

To temporarily address the problem, he said he together with the unit committee members organizes weekly communal labor to clear the dump but blamed some members of the community for the indiscriminate manner in which they dump the refuse.

Though there are two rubbish containers in other parts of the electoral area, Honourable Agblazo lamented that the containers were not emptied on time when they got full, resulting in a spill-over into the surrounding environment.

Unit Committee Secretary for the area, Ologo David Teye said the situation has persisted for more than eight years, with the rubbish dump blocking an access road in the process and joined calls by the Assemblyman for the problems to be fixed immediately.



Deplorable toilets

But unsightly rubbish dumps are not the only problems the people of Sra are confronted with. They say deplorable toilets remain another problem.

Unit Committee Secretary for the area, Ologo David Teye described the existing toilet facilities as death traps with portions caving in.

According to him, the wind blows the rubbish into nearby homes, littering the entire community in the process, and appealed to the Municipal Assembly and other NGOs to come on board and support the community.

The Assemblyman said though the Municipal Environmental Health Officer (MEHO) for Yilo Krobo, at a point suggested the closure of the Korledjen toilet facility due to its state to save lives, this hasn’t been carried out “since there is no other place of convenience for the residents.”
“We have three public toilets all of them are in a deplorable state, especially the Korledjen one, it's condemned.

At a point, the MEHO came and instructed that they shouldn’t use it again because it’s a death trap, that is the problem we are having,” he said.

He however added that he’ll continue to press the authorities to heed the cry of the people for an improvement of their sanitation challenges.
Municipal Chief Executive for Yilo Krobo, Ebenezer Tetteh Kupualor when contacted by GhanaWeb collaborated on the plight of the residents but explained that evacuating the major refuse dumps dotted in communities in the municipality required “a lot of funds” which were beyond the means of the Assembly.

On the deplorable toilets in the community, Mr. Kupualor agreed that most toilets in the municipality were in a deplorable condition since they were established “long ago,” adding that the municipality is yet to benefit from any of the public-private partnership (PPP) toilet facilities being built across the country.