IN the little villages of Sikaman, the vulture is a sanitation officer. Inside the head of the bald creature is a genetic ‘aberration’ that induces the vulture to clean the environment.

Specializing in solid waste management, the common vulture rids the village of dead rats, lizards and chicken entrails. And when a goat or sheep dies, it is the vulture that is summoned to perform the post-mortem. Needless to say, the vulture’s surgical skills are legendary.

Of course, the vulture has an assistant. The crow is an environmental deputy. The crow also doubles as a priest and wears a cassock. Unfortunately, it cannot be a choirmaster, by courtesy of its horrible voice. When it croaks, the choristers will take to flight.

It is well documented that although the crow is not as versatile as the vulture in its environmental gymnastics, its contributions cannot be discounted.

Now, apart from the flighty experts in sanitation, villagers themselves are very environmentally conscious. Our villages are spotlessly clean and whenever I travel to my hometown, I desire to live there. I cherish the sense of cleanliness the people have inculcated in themselves. When I get to the capital city from the village, I get depressed.

Mayor Adjiri-Blankson was appointed to launch an environmental revolution, and he did just that. He has organised Saturday clean-ups and earned a bad name.

When people are busy preparing for funerals, Uncle Blankson is saying they should go and clean gutters. What the hell! So residents in the capital get upset. However, they must obey. After all, he is the mayor.

The problem with Uncle Blankson is that his outfit can organise well but execute poorly. It could be lack of personnel to oversee operations or logistics or both.

Residents, drivers, food vendors, drunkards and lunatics alike join in the clean-up and scoop out smelly stuff from gutters onto the streets. The garbage is expected to be scooped onto trucks for disposal. The trucks don’t come and the rains fall. The streets become a horrible mess and Uncle Blankson carries the blame.

Eventually, the mess end up in the gutters, and so work done is zero. However, where the garbage trucks come, work done is about 95 to 100 percent. What I hear is that Uncle Blankson is not in charge of garbage trucks.

Private companies operate the trucks, and if they do not join in the exercise, should Uncle take the blame? But they need to join the exercise and must join compulsorily; otherwise the city cannot be beautified.

What I like most about Uncle Blankson is his tenacity. He once tried ridding the streets of Accra of hawkers and also tried enforcing the rule that drivers should join in clean-ups. A bus nearly sent him off to eternity. He escaped with some injuries.

Happily he is not daunted. Even if Ghanaians say they won’t dispose of garbage, he will gladly do it himself.

However, the reality is that the city cannot be beautified by Uncle Blankson alone. It is a collective duty. There are too many "lavender" spots in Accra, too smelly for comfort, and only a national and collective resolve to put shoulders to the wheel can Accra be the capital worth its name.

Meantime, more grease to Uncle Blankson’s knuckles.