Labadi Beach, a leisure spot for tourists and revellers in the capital has been engulfed by filth along its shores and in the ocean.
Plastic bags, used diapers, underwear and many other pieces of rubbish lined up the shoreline of the beach facing the Gulf of Guinea, the northeasternmost part of the Atlantic Ocean on Saturday, August 14, 2021.
A waitress at one of the restaurants on the beach spoke to GhanaWeb and blamed residents in the nearby community of littering the Kpeshi river which enters the sea at the beach.
"Some people throw rubbish into the gutter over there and it goes into the sea and the sea brings it back to the beach," said the waitress who gave her name only as Rejoice.
"There is filth at the beach every day and we clean up every Saturday...The visitors complain but we convince them to stay," Rejoice added.
The gate fee that was charged before entry into the public beach was GHc15 on a Saturday and tickets were not issued to the reporter who visited the Labadi Beach which is also known as the La Pleasure Beach.
There were a few people present as at noon and the restaurants and bars on the property were aggressively competing for patronage of their near-empty spots.
"We feel short-changed when we pay such amounts to a public beach and see rubbish all over the place. The authorities should be ashamed of themselves," said Hassan Shardow, a tourist visiting the beach with his family.
Another reveller, Akua Boateng, who was at the beach to celebrate the birthday party of her daughter said it was not right to charge fees to enter a beach where you are going to patronise restaurants and bars.
The gate attendants at the Labadi Beach declined to speak with the GhanaWeb reporter and failed to provide a receipt for the GHc15 paid.
Meanwhile, beaches are supposed to be closed as the coronavirus pandemic persists. President Akufo-Addo maintained in his last national address on the coronavirus pandemic that beaches remain closed.
In July 2021, Akwasi Agyemang, the Chief Executive Officer of the Ghana Tourism Authority (GTA), during a visit to tourist sites in Accra together with the Minister of Tourism, Arts and Culture, Mohammed Ibrahim Awal, said funds have been sourced by the Ministry under the Ghana Cares Programme to develop the La Pleasure Beach among other tourist sites in the country.
He said in a Business and Financial Times report published on GhanaWeb that a case is being made to reopen beaches for the public.
However, the Labadi Beach is already opened to the public.
