Anyone who drives or walks the streets of Accra, our capital, cannot deny the shameful self-inflicted filth piled up on almost every corner. 

As smelly filth gets thrown up by the rains from uncovered drains, the ugly nature of our acts of lawlessness in the way we treat the environment comes out once again to hit us hard.

It is painful that year after year, the money spent on what we believe could be lasting solutions has not yielded the needed solutions. Similarly, the intense education on attitudinal changes and the many reminders from pulpits that cleanliness is next to godliness have all yielded little impact. 

Admittedly, some individuals and conscious communities do try to distil their drains but the injury they end up creating by leaving the dug-out filth on the shoulders of the roads adds salt to our injuries.

Most of the time, the cleared filth removed from the gutters is left unattended for weeks until the next rain drags them back into those same drains. So really, there has not been any satisfactory solution to clearing the filth from our communities.

Magic wand

Almost all the magic wands employed so far to eliminate the filth from our streets have failed us. There is something however that I came across this past week which I thought may work for us if it could be institutionalised.

In trying to dodge traffic last Tuesday to a destination in the Ridge area, I drove past what I thought could be a magic wand and could present us with a regular solution to keeping clean our communities – the use of fewer offending prisoners as one may refer to them. 

I saw a number of young prisoners in their uniforms under supervision by a uniformed prison officer clearing weeds and rubbish from an enclave near the Kofi Annan ICT Centre at Ridge.

I almost gave a thumbs up to the officer thinking he and his superiors were doing something very needful and beneficial to the community. By the time I returned from my function, using the same route, the area was sparkling clean.

I found it a clever idea to put to community use those prisoners assessed as less threatening and who otherwise would have been wasting away in a sweaty packed prison cell on a bright sunny day. Could we not institutionalise this form of “cleaning” engagement, at least, for our prime areas and ceremonial roads and streets?

Regular schedules

If one is not breaching any law or protocols, would it be too much to ask the Ministry of Interior or whoever is responsible to consider regular schedules for prisons around the country to put their “less dangerous” inmates to community work? One can begin to use them for tidying up our streets and communities, something we need dearly while they too get the opportunity to be out there, enjoying needed fresh air and exercising their bodies.

Teaming up with the Ministry of Local Government or the Assemblies, equipment and other tools needed for this kind of community work, tidying up common grounds on a regular basis could easily be agreed on.

And why not? For years that the Assemblies taxed us and collected our property rates and until recently, with the baton passed on to the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA), some of the revenue accrued from property rates could be ploughed back here. No doubt any such support to the Prisons Service would be a welcome gesture. 

It may even be the beginning of an adhoc or permanent aside income generation or feeding support to the prisoners.

One is sure this could be done. I have witnessed a group of inmates clearing bushes along the bypass that links the Burma Camp underpass to East Airport. I have also encountered a group of them clearing weeds and other rubbish on the Liberation Road, specifically in the island in front of the Jubilee House.

No doubt the same has happened or is happening in other parts of the city. If that is the case, then one can push for a special case to be considered for streets, neighbourhoods and communities where the filth has engulfed communities and brought to question, the beauty of our capital.

It is indeed time for innovations that could move us forward. The sanitation issue which continues to leave us dumbfounded needs every citizen’s ideas and suggestions. We cannot afford to look passively on to a critical issue such as a clean environment. 

It speaks tons about a people; it impinges on a healthy society and takes a lot away from beautification and decency. Let us try the use of prison inmates in our search for tidying up our environment, so long as it is lawful.