Motivated by her civic duty to her community, entrepreneur, banker and international speaker, Dr. Bernardette Hoffman, with support from her friends, as well as other natives of Elmina in the Central Region, has desilted blocked gutters in the community.
Volunteers, who numbered over 35 youths, swept the major streets of the town, desilted the opened drains that had been blocked with refuse and sand. The day ended with a youth engagement forum.
Elmina, also known as Edina in the local Fante, is the capital town of the Komenda/Edina/Eguafo/Abirem District.
Natives of the town who joined the civic effort were Dr. Ernest Annan-Prah, Ms. Ruby Ofori-Arthur, Mr. Isaac Atobrah, Mrs. Araba Murray, Ms. Linda Buabeng and Mrs. Europa Afedi.
Dr. Hoffman noted that waste management had been and remained a big challenge in urban and rural areas, especially in developing countries.
“The waste management situation in Elmina is very disturbing, hence, the call to this duty,” she said during an interview with the media.
Dr. Hoffman observed that it had become normal for citizens to fail to recognise their role in waste management, and become unwilling to participate in clean-up campaigns.
A portion of the major lagoon, Benya, was noted to have been filled with refuse and almost blocking its flow. The community, in the absence of an appropriate dump site, is converting the lagoon banks to a dump site. This, she said, needs urgent attention so the situation does not get any worse.
The entrepreneur maintained that waste dumps sites are prime breeding areas for communicable disease through vectors such as rodents, mosquitoes and houseflies, which can exacerbate the break out of food and water-borne diseases such as cholera and typhoid.
The day was climaxed with a brief stakeholder engagement where some youths were encouraged to help keep the community clean, with each one contributing their quota.
They were motivated to appreciate that their problems could be solved if all stakeholders take on roles in the shared responsibility for sustainable management of waste at the local level.
Beyond the physical clean up activity, the effort also created a greater sense of unity and friendship among the volunteering youths and organisers.
