A trader, Madam Patience Pomaa, has been fined GH¢2,400 or, in default, sentenced to one month in prison by the Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA) Sanitation Court for refusing to participate in the National Sanitation Day exercise.
Madam Pomaa was convicted on Thursday, 4th December 2025, after eventually pleading guilty to charges of refusing to take part in the mandatory clean-up exercise and disregarding a statutory notice issued by Environmental Health Officers.
According to the facts presented in court by the Prosecutor, Nii Okine Aryee, a team of Environmental Health Officers, who were on their usual monitoring rounds, on 10th October 2025, a day the government had set aside for the National Sanitation Day exercise, observed that Madam Pomaa had failed to join the exercise and subsequently issued her with a statutory notice. This was later followed by a formal court summons.
In delivering the conviction, the magistrate, Her Worship Mrs. Rosemond Vera Aryeetey stressed that the National Sanitation Day exercise was not optional, but an obligation placed on all residents and that everyone needed to participate in the clean-up activities.
The court held that failure to join the exercise undermined efforts to keep communities clean and could contribute to poor environmental sanitation, stressing that neglecting such civic responsibilities could have serious public health consequences, including outbreaks of diseases such as cholera, typhoid fever, diarrhoea, malaria and other communicable illnesses.
