Hon. Ismael Zagoon-Saeed,

MCE

Komenda-Edina-Eguafo-Abrem (KEEA) Assembly

Elmina

Dear Honorable MCE,

I bring you greetings. 

This past week, President John Dramani Mahama was quoted as saying that cleanliness of the areas put in the care of MMDCEs will be used to measure their performance. In other words, failure to pay attention to sanitation and cleanliness ie not get the desired results, will result in the termination of MMDCE appointments.  

I wish you well.  

Therefore, I am presenting you with an Agenda for the cleanliness of Elmina.  I know that Elmina is only one part of what makes up KEEA.  But, if you succeed in keeping Elmina clean, the rest will be made clean by your efforts as well.

You see, when I was growing up in Elmina, the gutters were cleaned every day.  We knew the workers who did that job.  They swept and cleaned the streets everyday.  I can see their facial images as I write this.  The local authorities had incinerators.  The garbage collected was sorted and what could be burned was set on fire and got burned.  My family lived just behind the old Elmina market.  There was a small gutter in front of our house.  We did not dare to urinate or throw any kind of garbage into that gutter.  Since the residents in our house would be blamed if anything went into the gutter that shouldn’t be there, we stayed vigilant and prevented people from dumping their garbage in the gutter.  The local authorities were vigilant and alive to their responsibilities.

I have provided this bit of information to show that cleanliness can be achieved.  If it could be done in the 1950s and 1960s with old technology, it can be done now.  

I will be in Elmina this weekend and I will go around with videographers to document the situation in a few areas.  This will be repeated every week until the end of this year.  We will produce a document accompanied by a video on progress achieved.  It’s the least we can do to support the call for cleanliness.

Those areas include:

 The gutters from Teterkessim to the Benya Lagoon 

The Old Elmina Cemetery – the entrance is filthy, an eyesore as garbage is thrown there from the new market

The beach from the Castle to Iture – where many use as an open toilet and garbage dump

The Benya Lagoon – open gutters run garbage and dirt directly to the lagoon causing silt and a very dirty situation

The area in front and at the back of the Elmina Castle. A market has developed informally  and has attained permanence in front of the Castle and across from Mpoben causing the area to be filthy and choked with bumper to bumper traffic 

The road from the Elmina Castle to the Essaman Junction has horrible heaps of garbage from Bantoma, to Mboframa Akyinim to Pershie and beyond

Java Hill residential area – garbage collection area

Bronyibima, Zongo, Amisano, Ayensudu. Esarmu, and essentially the whole town needs daily cleaning, collection of garbage and dirt – emphasis on daily and disposal of what is cleaned and collected.

And by the way, who gave authorization for a restaurant and bar to be located inside the Castle an internationally known historical site? This causes some of us sons and daughters of Elmina to be insulted and harassed for allowing sacred grounds to be used for entertainment and merrymaking.  The operator of the restaurant. A hardworking, charitable and well-meaning European with businesses in Elmina and Cape Coast who operates the restaurant, may not have the same reverence and feelings about the slave trade and human sufferings that went on in the Castle.  But the local authorities must know better.

Elmina, Edina, Anomansa deserves better.  

Many of us stand ready to support this call from President Mahama to make our villages, towns and cities clean.

If you need support individuals and the private sector can provide, please call on us.

Yours in the service of the nation.

Papa Kwesi Nduom

Edinanyi