Residents of Sunyani Newtown in the Brong Ahafo Region are afraid of an outbreak of epidemics if the municipal assembly sanitary trucks continue to spread faecal matter it collected from public toilets, onto the streets on their way to a landfill site.
It was a bad and nasty scene last Friday afternoon when one of the sanitary trucks loaded with human excreta from the Sunyani Newtown public toilet bumped into a taxi cab, on its way to the landfill site splashing its content onto traders along the road soiling their wares. Residents could not help but cover their noses and mouths to stop inhaling the stinking odour.
The driver of the truck, Issufu Yakubu, told DAILY GUIDE, that using the refuse trucks to collect faeces from public toilets is normal especially when the faecal matter sometimes become too dry for the septic tankers to draw from the pit.
He explained that on its way to the dumping site, he was blocked by a taxi cab at a junction and in an attempt to force his way out, the faeces splashed onto the street and onto doughnut sellers along the road.
The incident which attracted community members nearly resulted in the beating of the driver, Issufu Yakubu. He was quickly whisked away by officers from the Sunyani Municipal Police Station. Residents say, that was not the first time the assembly’s faeces-carrying trucks ‘misbehaved’ on the road. They said all efforts to prevail upon the assembly to stop the practice failed.
Efforts by DAILY GUIDE to speak to the environmental officer of the Sunyani Municipal Assembly failed. The officer in charge named only as Korkor, DAILY GUIDE learnt, has gone on a course in Accra with the MCE as nobody was willing to speak on the issue. Meanwhile some of the women whose doughnuts were soiled and had to dispose them off said the assembly must compensate them.
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