Let’s watch these things

Let’s watch these things
Story: Salome Donkor
The maintenance of law and order is essential for development. Apart from the Fourth Republican Constitution which is the supreme law of the land, the various 138 metropolitan, municipal and district assemblies have enacted bye-laws to govern the operation of the various assemblies, while corporate institutions and organisations also have rules and regulations governing their operations, to avoid chaos and anarchy.
In the same vein, the Accra Metropolitan Assembly and the Tema Municipal Assembly have bye-laws on the management of solid and liquid waste, operations of street market and operations of vehicle dealers, as well as the control of poultry in dwelling-houses.
The laws also deal with operation of cemeteries, use of classrooms by religious bodies, cleaning, entertainment licence, abatement of noise, control of dogs, regulation of vehicle parking places, environmental sanitation and maintenance of premises, among others.
Moving through parts of the city of Accra however shows blatant disregard for these laws. This has led to the springing up of unauthorised structures in parts of the city that had created slums, notably at ‘Abuja’ near the CMD lorry park, and the popular ‘Sodom and Gomorrah’ at Old Fadama.
Apart from this, there is indiscriminate littering by some residents who care less about the health implications of their actions. People also put up dwelling houses on water ways and thereby block the free-flow of water when it rains and causes floods in the city.
The least talked about the carelessness on the road, the better. The National Road Safety Commission (NRSC) described this as the result of aggressive driving and impatience on the part of drivers leading to increase in avoidable road accidents.
A number of ‘tro tro’ drivers operating to Adenta, Legon and Madina, have turned part of the Tetteh Quarshie Interchange into a loading point, although they have been provided with a designated loading point at Shieashie. They are not the only offenders as a number of bus stops in the city had been turned into loading spots.
It is the result lack of compliance on the part of street hawkers to relocate the Pedestrian Shopping Mall at the Kwame Nkrumah Circle that had made the AMA to embark on yet another decongestion exercise, which is the third in two years, in the city.
Recently, this page carried a picture of traders who had rebuilt wooden slabs on gutters at the Ashiaman Market to transact business after they had been removed by the TAMA, in blatant disregard of the powers of the assembly.
No wonder the major concern of Athenian philosophers and the underlying concern of all their theoretical pronouncement was the question of order in the society, since they regarded the maintenance of order as essential for the promotion of true justice within their metropolis to produce the best political community.
As Thomas Hobbes, the great English thinker puts it “All people are selfish; in the absence of authority, they will turn on each other and life will be solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short”.
It is necessary for all of us to change our attitudes and ensure that law and order works for a lawless society is a disorganised society. The city authorities and all law enforcement agencies should be proactive and ensure that those who break the law are not sparred.
To cut a long story short, the Metro Page has carried a number of pictures depicting the state of indiscipline and disregard for the city’s rules and regulations, as well as the inability of city authorities to fully enforce their rules and regulations, due to what they have described as inadequate logistic, financial and human resources.
The page will continue to highlight these issues to ensure a positive response from citizens and related bodies.