The Ashaiman Municipal Assembly (ASHMA) has held a stakeholders forum at Ashaiman at which it unveiled a logo with the inscription ‘Unity, Patriotism and Development’ as the first step towards changing the image of the municipality.
The forum, which had as its theme 'Ashaiman Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow for Development in Unity', brought together a cross section of residents, made up of chiefs, queens, heads of departments, market women, youth groups, service commanders and corporate bodies.
The Municipal Chief Executive, Mr Albert Boakye Okyere, in a welcome address, appealed to the Ashaiman community to help give the municipality a good name.
He explained that Ashaiman had been associated with negative things in the past, which gave it a negative image and stressed that it was high time this was reversed.
Mr Okyere said Ashaiman was rated the fifth most populous community in the country during the year 2000 population census, making it unique.
He commended the government for considering it necessary to raise the status to a municipality.
Mr Okyere said as a 'baby assembly', it needed a strong revenue base to meet its aspirations and therefore appealed to all stakeholders to make it possible for the assembly to collect as much revenue as possible to finance its development programmes.
He added that there were plans to make Ashaiman ‘a 24-hour city’ to utilise all available human and natural resources for the benefit of the people.
Mr Okyere continued that the plans included additional lorry parks, schools, upgrading health facilities from a centre into a hospital, a modern market, in addition to the existing one, a transport terminal and also beautification of the town’s central business district.
He observed that failure to enforce the assembly’s by-laws and regulations had set back the clock of development at Ashaiman, adding that proper planning and compliance with regulations and by-laws would enable the assembly to achieve its objectives.
Mr Okyere says the health of the people is very important, and that without good health there would be no healthy human resource to execute development programmes.
He reported that the assembly had tackled the issue of sanitation with all seriousness and cleared all heaps of refuse.
According to him, the assembly had entered into an agreement with an Italian firm to construct a refuse recycling plant. When this is done, it would help the municipality to avoid the social and economic repercussions.
Mr Okyere commended the security agencies for coming on top of the security challenges which came up recently.
He, however, expressed concern that the Ashaiman station of the Ghana National Fire Service lacked the requisite equipment such as a fire tender, and gave the assurance that the assembly had placed an order for one.
The Municipal Finance Officer, Mr Stephen Ofori Siaw, and Mr Edward Mba of the Adenta Municipal Solid Waste Management Department, delivered papers on the financial and waste management situations of ASHMA.
Mr Mba said the assembly would phase out the use of pan latrines. He said landlords must therefore provide tenants with good toilet facilities.
The Member of Parliament for Ashaiman, Mr Alfred Agbesi, for his part, emphasised the need to accelerate development in the Ashaiman municipality and, therefore, called on the people to put behind them their political affiliations and work in concert for the growth of the municipality.
Mr Agbesi suggested that the assembly reconsiders the idea to privatise public toilets to generate some income to finance development programmes.
He said the municipality had 24 toilets in the year 2000, but the number had increased to 30 currently.
The Queen of Ashaiman, Naa Amui, assisted by a representative of the Ashaiman Stool, Isaac Nii Komey, as well as the Chief Executive, Mr Okyere, unveiled the logo.
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