A sustainability expert says Ghana’s flooding problem stems more from public littering habits and weak law enforcement than from the two day clean up itself.
Dr. Sammy King Baiden told Asaase Radio’s Townhall Talk that many Ghanaians dump waste into drains knowing there is little chance of facing consequences, a pattern he argues no amount of periodic cleaning will fix on its own.
“The real problem is behaviour,” he said, arguing that consistent enforcement of existing sanitation laws paired with sustained public education would achieve more than emergency cleanups ever could.
His comments follow the government’s July 10 and 11 National General Cleaning Days, declared across seven regions after flooding on June 28 and 29 that the National Disaster Management Organisation says killed about 13 people and displaced roughly 58,000. Baiden has separately criticized the exercise itself as cosmetic, noting that waste dragged from drains often sits piled on roadsides for weeks before rain washes much of it back into the same channels, a complaint echoed by IMANI Africa’s Kofi Bentil, who described parts of the city centre as still stinking with uncollected refuse a day into the exercise.
During the cleanup, videos circulated online showing enforcement officers publicly confronting people caught littering, including footage of individuals made to retrieve trash they had discarded in front of onlookers. Baiden condemned the underlying littering but rejected the public shaming that followed.
“There are laws. Let the laws deal with people as they should,” he said, arguing that punishment belongs in the hands of established legal procedure rather than roadside spectacle.
Baiden pointed to countries with strictly enforced littering laws as evidence that Ghanaians are capable of maintaining cleaner environments once institutions apply rules consistently rather than sporadically. President Mahama has made a similar behavioral appeal during the exercise, telling citizens that drains are not dumping grounds and urging a shift in how households handle waste. Baiden went further, calling on government to fund nationwide behavioral change campaigns and to help communities themselves become active enforcers of environmental discipline rather than leaving compliance to occasional state led sweeps.
