Do Public Service Workers always need to be threatened before they deliver?

In line with its promise to rid the capital off filth and make it the millennium city, the Accra Metropolitan Assembly (A.M.A) has taken a bold step which I support so well. On The 27th of July 2011, I saw a news item on E.t.v-Ghana which said that the Accra Metropolitan Assemble (A.M.A) had given a maximum of 60days to waste management companies to rid Accra off filth.  In an interview with the Mayor of Accra, Mr Alfred Vanderpuije, he said there had been several complaints about the poor services some of these companies render. In view of this, these companies had been given a maximum of 60days to clear filth from Accra. He added that several companies had presented proposals to handle waste management and therefore this measure had been put in place to replace companies currently found not to be delivering. This is however not my worry. 

My worry is that on 28th July (thus just a day after the news item) at exactly 6:40am, the company responsible for rubbish collection in my area (Odorkor) were there to do their job and I was so amazed. This has never happened in my area (at least as far as I can remember). Does it mean these people had all the time been taking us for a ride; with all the excuses they have been giving us for not coming for the rubbish; sometimes for more than 2 weeks. I could not believe that it had to take a threat from A.M.A for them to begin to deliver. 

We previously had Zoomlion responsible for our area and they delivered effectively until the new one (i.e. Asadu) was apportioned to our area and since that change we have been receiving poor services. People leave their rubbish at collection points for days hoping it would be collected soon and sometimes have the rains even pour on them which leads to several environmental hazards. The most annoying thing is at the end of the month they come demanding their money. In confronting them, we were told there were no dumping sites and also roads leading to available dumping sites were very bad so their vehicles could not asses them. However my question is that, did the threat of them losing their contract with A.M.A suddenly fix the roads and provide dumping sites so they began to deliver?

By: Julius Ofori Boadu (JOB)
(juliusboadu@gmail.com)
Twitter: @CwesiOfori