The Agona West Municipal Assembly has held a massive clean-up exercise to ensure the streets, lorry parks and market centres are clean. The five-hour exercise was undertaken by personnel of the Ghana Immigration Service, Ghana National Fire Service, Ambulance Service, Staff of the Agona West Municipal Assembly and Civil Society Organisations. They desilted choked gutters, swept the lorry parks, cleaned the markets and other public places. Addressing them after the exercise, Mr Evans Addison Onomah Coleman, the Municipal Chief Executive (MCE), hinted that the Assembly had commenced its monthly clean-up exercise as part of its responsibility to keep the streets and public places tidy. He said the Assembly would continue to collaborate with all stakeholders in environmental health and sanitation to ensure that cleanliness became the hallmark of the citizenry. The MCE urged the people not to dump refuse indiscriminately as that was a sanitation offence that could attract prosecution. The Assembly, which fo r four successive times had emerged as the Best Central Regional Sanitation Municipality, recently went through an environmental and sanitation assessment and hoped it would once again win in the region. Mr Coleman said those remarkable achievements were due to effective measures put in place to inspire workers to do more, especially staff of the Environmental Health and Sanitation Department. He commended the Municipal Environmental Health and Sanitation Officer, Mr George Freeman, for his tireless efforts and hard work that had left indelible marks in sanitation management. Mr Freeman, who is on transfer to Greater Accra, said his successor would continue the good work to enhance environmental cleanness and urged the Assembly to give him its maximum support. Mr Christian Ocran, the Agona West Municipal Manager of Zoomlion entreated the market women and traders to desist from throwing refuse into gutters and other unauthorized places with the view that Zoomlion staff would collect those rubbish. He caut ioned them against 'defaecating into plastic bags and dumping them into refuse containers,' adding that it was the collective responsibility of all to keep the environment clean. Source: Ghana News Agency