Two days of brooms cannot substitute for decades of sanitation neglect — Afenyo -Markin

By Yaw Opoku Amoako July 15, 2026

Parliament’s opposition leadership has challenged the governmental framing of a two-day national cleaning exercise as an adequate response to catastrophic flooding that exposed systemic infrastructure dysfunction and demanded institutional reckoning through comprehensive policy formulation rather than performative cleanup campaigns that address symptoms whilst leaving underlying pathologies untreated.

Alexander Afenyo-Markin, commanding the parliamentary Minority caucus, addressed the legislative chamber on Tuesday, July 14, articulating a distinction between therapeutically meaningful interventions and institutional theatre masquerading as problem-solving.

Community mobilisation for environmental restoration constitutes valuable activity; characterising it as solution to recurring flood catastrophe represents deliberate institutional self-deception regarding the magnitude of reform necessary.

The June 29 deluge’s severity, in Afenyo-Markin’s assessment, furnishes definitive proof that Ghana requires institutional commitment to coordinated, systematised approaches encompassing drainage system architecture, sanitation infrastructure, and flood prevention methodologies grounded in scientific principle and sustained through governmental resource allocation.

The opposition leader recalled that during parliamentary discussion of the June flooding, the Interior Minister had committed governmental apparatus toward development of comprehensive policy designed to address the flooding crisis and its foundational causes.

Yet as days accumulated following that ministerial assurance, no such policy announcement had materialised — a temporal gap suggesting that institutional commitment remained rhetorical rather than operational.

“The Minister for the Interior made a statement on this flood situation indicating that government will come with a comprehensive policy on this flood situation and how to address it.

Mr. Speaker, I submit that it is not enough to declare two days for the purpose of clean-up,” Afenyo-Markin stated, his formulation positioning the cleanup exercise as woefully inadequate to the scale of institutional necessity.

“The clean-up exercise is not the solution. The solution is a well-thought-out policy on sanitation. That is what we need as a country and it is becoming too late in the day,” he continued, his language conveying institutional exasperation at what he perceived as continued procrastination on fundamental policy formulation.

The Minority Leader extended his critique toward governmental determination regarding problem-solving. An administration genuinely committed to addressing challenges of flooding’s magnitude would not permit extended temporal lapses between acknowledgement of crisis and policy announcement.

Institutional seriousness demands immediate action grounded in policy architecture rather than delayed responses centred upon environmental cleanup labour that, whilst visible and symbolically valuable, addresses neither the drainage system deficiencies nor the urbanisation practices that have progressively narrowed waterflow corridors.

“Any government determined to solve a problem of the magnitude of which we saw will, without delay, announce a national policy on sanitation,” Afenyo-Markin declared, his formulation positioning policy announcement as a litmus test of governmental earnestness.

The parliamentary intervention illuminates a fundamental governance tension: the political value of visible, immediate action against the institutional necessity for deliberate, comprehensive policy formulation.

Cleanup exercises generate photographs and narrative of governmental responsiveness; comprehensive sanitation policy requires sustained governmental commitment, technical expertise and resource allocation extending far beyond electoral cycles.

The Minority Leader’s intervention signals that opposition constituencies are monitoring whether governmental statements regarding comprehensive policy response will translate into actual legislative initiatives and budgetary commitment or whether they represent the temporary rhetorical concessions that precede institutional reversion to business-as-usual operational patterns.