Last Saturday, the first Saturday of September, I decided to go to Accra Central to purchase a few items. I was reminded, as I always am on that particular Saturday, that it was National Sanitation Day, the day the Accra Metropolitan Assembly’s own bye-laws set aside each month for a citywide clean-up.
I arrived in the Central Business District expecting to see people actively cleaning their surroundings.
What I saw left me disappointed.
Many shops were closed. I was told they would only open after twelve noon, because it was sanitation day and traders were expected to participate in the clean-up.
That sounded reasonable.
But as I walked around, I found something rather strange. Many shop owners had simply closed their shops, sat around, and waited for the appointed time to pass. There was little evidence of the vigorous community clean-up one would expect from a serious sanitation exercise. In some places, business was continuing regardless. In other places, where some cleaning had actually taken place, piles of rubbish remained uncollected.
That raises a very simple question.
What exactly are we achieving with sanitation day?
A ritual is not a sanitation policy
There is nothing inherently wrong with dedicating a particular day to sanitation. The exercise itself is not new. It was first introduced in 2014, allowed to lapse over the years, and relaunched by government only a year ago, in September 2025, with a directive that all public spaces be cleared by eight each morning and that assemblies submit monthly sanitation reports up the chain to their Regional Coordinating Councils and, ultimately, to the Ministry. That is a serious enough framework on paper. The problem begins when the exercise becomes largely ceremonial in practice.
If shops are closed for several hours, economic activity is disrupted, workers lose productive time, and traders are inconvenienced, yet the rubbish collected is left lying around because nobody comes to collect it, then we must have the courage to admit that something is fundamentally wrong with the system, whatever the reporting framework on paper claims to track.
Sanitation is not achieved simply because people sweep. The real measure is what happens to the waste after it has been swept. Who collects it? Where is it taken? How quickly is it removed? Who is responsible when it is left behind? What happens to people who repeatedly dump refuse in unauthorised places? Until we answer these questions, we are merely moving rubbish from one place to another.
The symbolism is becoming more important than the substance
What made my experience even more disappointing was what happened later. Before I left the area, I saw the Mayor of Accra, Hon. Michael Kpakpo Allotey, together with an official from the Ministry responsible for Local Government, taking part in the sweeping exercise in the market.
One could argue that their participation demonstrates leadership by example. I understand that argument. But I question whether this is the kind of leadership our sanitation crisis requires.
We do not need senior government officials to demonstrate that they can hold a broom. Ghanaians already know how to sweep. What we need is a sanitation system that ensures waste is properly collected, transported, disposed of, and managed every single day, not once a month, in front of cameras. It is worth noting that even the Ministry itself appears to sense this. Only days before my visit, the Minister for Local Government, Chieftaincy and Religious Affairs was himself publicly calling for the National Sanitation Day initiative to be revived and strengthened, an admission, in effect, that a programme relaunched with considerable fanfare barely a year ago has already begun to lose momentum.
If the Mayor spends an hour sweeping while piles of refuse remain uncollected elsewhere in the same market, the photograph may look good, but the sanitation problem remains. This is where I believe we sometimes confuse visibility with effectiveness. A public official sweeping rubbish makes for a powerful image. A functioning waste management system produces results that may not make for an attractive photograph, but those results matter far more.
Imagine if we treated sanitation like we treat electricity or water
Nobody would suggest that citizens should gather once a month to generate electricity. Nobody would propose a monthly “water day” on which everyone fetches water and then goes back to having no reliable supply. We recognise that electricity and water require systems that operate continuously. Sanitation is no different.
Waste is produced every day. Therefore, waste management must operate every day. Restaurants produce waste. Markets produce waste. Homes produce waste. Offices produce waste. Construction sites produce waste. Commercial centres produce enormous quantities of waste. Why, then, do we continue to approach sanitation principally as a monthly event?
Accra needs enforcement, not theatre
The Accra Metropolitan Assembly should be asking much harder questions. Who is responsible for sanitation within each commercial area? What are the obligations of shop owners and traders? What are the responsibilities of the Assembly? How frequently should waste be collected? What are the penalties for illegal dumping, and are those penalties actually enforced? Are waste collection companies meeting their contractual obligations, and are Assembly officials supervising them? Are drains being cleared before they become blocked? Are markets provided with adequate waste bins? And perhaps most importantly, who is held accountable when the system fails?
These are governance questions. They cannot be solved with brooms and publicity, and they cannot be answered by a monthly report that simply confirms the sweeping happened, without ever tracking what happened to the waste afterwards.
Make sanitation a daily responsibility
There is also a responsibility on traders and residents. We cannot blame the Assembly for everything. People must stop dumping rubbish indiscriminately. Shop owners must keep their immediate surroundings clean. Market associations must enforce sanitation rules among their members. Businesses that generate large quantities of waste must take responsibility for proper disposal. And where people deliberately violate sanitation regulations, the law must be enforced consistently.
The Assembly should establish clearly defined sanitation zones with identifiable officers responsible for them. Every zone should have measurable standards and a person or team accountable for meeting them. That way, when a particular area is dirty, we do not simply complain that “Accra is dirty.” We can ask who was responsible for that area and why the standard was not met.
The money question
We should also examine the economics of sanitation. How much money is spent on monthly sanitation exercises? How much is spent on waste collection, on public education, on enforcement, on cleaning drains? How much waste is generated in the Central Business District every day, and how much of it is actually collected?
The public deserves answers. If substantial resources are being committed to sanitation but the same areas remain dirty, then the issue may not be a lack of money. It may be poor planning, weak supervision, inadequate enforcement, or ineffective contracts. That is where the Assembly must focus its attention.
Let sanitation day become unnecessary
Perhaps the greatest measure of success would be to reach a point where we no longer need a special sanitation day. Imagine an Accra where traders clean their surroundings every day because it is an established obligation. Imagine waste being collected according to a reliable schedule. Imagine markets with adequate waste infrastructure. Imagine illegal dumping attracting predictable penalties. Imagine Assembly officials monitoring sanitation standards continuously. Imagine citizens knowing exactly where to report sanitation failures and receiving a response.
That would be real progress. The first Saturday of every month could then simply become another Saturday.
We should stop congratulating ourselves for symbolic action
I do not question the good intentions of those who participated in the exercise. My concern is whether we are measuring the right things.
If we want to take sanitation seriously, then let us take it seriously. Let the Mayor spend less time holding a broom for the cameras and more time demanding performance from the people and institutions responsible for waste management. Let the Minister focus on policy, financing, coordination, and accountability, rather than on reviving, every year or so, an initiative that keeps losing steam between relaunches. Let the Assembly publish sanitation standards and performance results. Let contractors be held to their contracts. Let traders and residents be held responsible for their obligations. And let the public know who is accountable when waste is not collected.
Accra does not need another symbolic clean-up. Accra needs a sanitation system that works.
Sanitation is too important to be reduced to a monthly ritual. If after all the sweeping the rubbish remains where it was left, then we have not solved the problem.
We have simply swept it into another photograph.