The Vice President, John Mahama has called on the private sector to invest heavily in the construction and maintenance of public toilets and other waste disposal points.
He said this among other things would harness a significant amount of liquid waste which can be treated and turned into organic product to increase the output of the ‘Going Green’ Project (GPP) which was recently launched.
GPP is to address the liquid waste problems associated with environmental sanitation.
The Vice President made this known at the First National Environmental Sanitation Forum held in Accra, which was organized by the National Coalition of NGOs in Waste Management and the Ministry of Environment Science and Technology.
It was sponsored by the World Bank Ghana Office as well as the Environmental Service Providers Association.
The forum was to afford stakeholders the opportunity to share ideas and demonstrate their commitment to greening and improving waste management practices in the country.
It is also in line with the current governments ‘100 Days’ Sanitation and Ghana Going Green (GGG) Agenda.
The Vice President noted that the rate at which plastic waste is being generated in the country is as a result of the over usage of plastic bags.
“You are all aware of the change in food vending practices where food wrapping and packaging has shifted from biodegradable materials like leaves, to the use of plastic bags, resulting in what I would term as the ‘Plastic Menace’”.
He said despite these challenges, various intervention strategies have been undertaken by previous Governments, Civil Society Organizations as well as Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies.
These interventions he said are environmental education, clean-up campaigns, infrastructural development, waste dumping sites, provision of waste bins at vantage points and the mobilization of financial and human capital to address waste management issues.
He however indicated that some of these interventions and policies failed because of lack of political will by previous governments, misplaced priorities, lack of financing opportunities and appropriate technology for renewable energy resource development as well as unrealistic implementation strategies at the local community level.
He noted that “equally important root causes of the poor sanitation in our cities and villages are the lack of community involvement and ownership of the intervention strategies, as well as inadequate education and awareness creation. I believe if these issues were given the necessary attention, the story would have been told differently today.”
He said any programme that would emanate from the forum aimed at addressing the waste management challenges in the country, should include decentralized strategies, since it would “empower local communities to seriously tackle their sanitation problems by giving them ownership of the intervention facilities.”
The Minister for Environment Science and Technology said the fast growing urban populations are presently exerting immense pressure on the natural resources of the country, as well as creating waste management problems in major towns and cities.
The environmental problems associated with this trend of growth she said have direct bearing on human health.
She however stated that urban growth cannot be avoided as long as cities are viewed as engines of growth contributing significantly to the overall economic growth of the country.
“To effectively tackle these problems, we must change our present strategies of solve the problems as they come and adopt a long term multi-pronged holistic planning approach”, she added.
She therefore called on the Architectural and Engineering Services Limited (AES), the Department of Urban Toads and the District Assemblies to consider in the future, designing roads with covered gutters and as much as possible take measures to cover all open gutters along the streets in the major cities.
There were statements of commitment from various Ministries, Security Agencies, Traditional Authorities, Religious Bodies and other stakeholders who pledged their commitment to seeing a clean Ghana within the first 100 days of the NDC administration.
No comments:
Post a Comment