A month after floods tore through Accra, JoyNews Explains uncovered a staggering revelation: GH¢2.03 billion collected through the Sanitation and Pollution Levy since 2021 has yielded little to no tangible results in improving the city's sanitation infrastructure. Despite the government's promise to fund specific interventions, including constructing sanitation facilities to eliminate open defecation, the money seems to have been squandered on maintaining landfill sites and waste treatment facilities.
GH¢2.03 Billion in Question
According to Finance Ministry data, GH¢1.51 billion of the collected funds had been spent by the end of 2024. The breakdown shows that around 80 percent, roughly GH¢1.2 billion, was spent maintaining landfill sites and waste treatment facilities. Around GH¢100 million went to improving air quality, GH¢95.9 million to fumigation and disinfection, and GH¢74.7 million to waste treatment infrastructure.
Notably, GH¢0 was spent on constructing sanitation facilities to eliminate open defecation, despite that being one of the levy's core objectives. As for the GH¢298 million collected in 2025, there is no official account yet of how it has been used. As of the end of 2024, the Sanitation and Pollution Account held GH¢180.5 million. Adding the 2025 collections suggests the account could now hold roughly GH¢478 million, assuming no additional withdrawals have been made.
The Clean-up That Raised a Legal Question
In the aftermath of the floods, President John Dramani Mahama declared Friday, July 10, and Saturday, July 11, 2026, as National General Cleaning Days across the seven regions affected, urging citizens to take part in a nationwide clean-up exercise aimed at improving sanitation and preventing disease outbreaks. However, the directive quickly ran into a legal challenge. Private legal practitioner, journalist, and host of Joy FM's Newsfile, Samson Lardy Anyenini, argued that compelling citizens to participate in the exercise was not backed by any national law empowering the President to enforce such a directive.
Two Failures, Not One
What JoyNews Explains found in this episode is a story with two sides. On one hand, there's a real accountability question: hundreds of millions of cedis collected specifically to fund sanitation infrastructure, with core objectives like ending open defecation, left completely unfunded. On the other hand, much of the filth the team filmed across Accra's markets, drains, and streets wasn't sitting there because of a funding gap. It was there because someone chose the ground over a bin. That part costs nothing to fix, and doesn't require a directive, a levy, or a law to correct.
As the report puts it: it's not one failure. It's two. And only one of them costs money to fix. The Accra Metropolitan Assembly and the Ministry of Sanitation and Water Resources must now come clean on how the collected funds have been used, and what concrete measures they will take to address the city's sanitation woes. The people of Accra deserve to know how their hard-earned money is being spent, and what tangible improvements they can expect to see in the coming months.
Source: Joy Online
