POINT OF ORDER
BY
KWAME GYASI
E-mail: makgyasi@ug.edu.gh
“When the last tree dies, mankind dies”
–Anon
Walkways in our cities and towns are left without concrete slabs leaving the breeze to blow around the sandy surface creating health hazards. Green grass grown on road islands in the middle of our streets are either not properly maintained or are strolled on by pedestrians and street traders destroying the beatification meant to be created. Residential and commercial facilities are put up without any provisions being made for refuse collection and car parks. The streets in front of buildings are inevitably used as car parks and refuse dumping grounds causing inconvenience to other road users and pedestrians. Stores are put up without any washroom facilities. It is a mystery how people can work as storekeepers and office workers in buildings for over eight hours without built-in washrooms. Where such facilities exist, lack of pipe borne water or availability of toilet rolls makes such places prime production of hydrogen sulphide gas. Has anybody attempted to use any washroom in any of the office buildings at the ministries? Those with functional semblance of usage are always locked up for the use of the senior management. Alas, no provision is made for the numerous visitors who go to those places to transact business.
Open spaces in urban areas and our cities meant for recreational facilities and green belts including Ramseyer sites and mangrove areas are sold to estate developers and cannibalised into housing estates meant for the rich and well to do in society. The madness, the greed, the corruption, the gluttony within the political establishment have reached a melting point where government offices and residences in prime areas are being demolished and the lands on which they stand are being sold to political cronies to be used for the construction of commercial facilities and residential apartments. It has been touted loud and clear on the news media that all the lands on which the prison headquarters establishment stands at the Cantonments and the Borstal Institute area have all been sold at giveaway prices. Obviously that must be where money laundering from most of the state resources which have been looted and shared, must be taking place.
Water bodies have been and are being destroyed from either galamsey operations or non-scientific methods in the use of fertilizers for farming operations. Studies indicate that one of the factors which has caused the death of the Densu River and as a result the Ghana Water Company must spend huge sums of money in treating the water to move it close to human consumption level is the seepage of fertilizer used by farmers on their farms along the banks of the river, one principal offender being a one time winner of the best farmer’s prize award at a National Farmers Day rally. Our virgin forests including forest reserves have been and are being destroyed by illegal and criminal logging activities, surface mining and uneconomic methods in harvesting of timber by big businesses, small time operators and illegal chain saw operators. Economic trees are cut down or simply destroyed without any attempt to plant replacements as required by law and regulations. In the advanced countries like Germany, you cannot cut a tree you yourself have planted in your yard without permit from the environment authorities..
Ghana is already importing timber for its furniture industry while the country’s forest cover has virtually been depleted. Bamboo tresses are harvested with the greed of the devil seeking disciples and left to rot by the roadsides. Famers now resort to the increasing use of imported fertilizers and herbicides with serious implication for the nation’s foreign reserves but also destroy natural growing foodstuffs like cocoyam, a practice hardly unknown in the past. Everyday we read in our newspapers about big businesses with the right political connections putting the future of the nation at risk in the uneconomic and inefficient use of our natural resources. In the light of all these, all we see are our millennium mayors making political statements in the print media and seizing every opportunity offered them in the electronic media to blow their dirty trumpet out of which jets effluent of contaminated discourse which serves no useful purpose. They turn to blow their trumpets, slapping their backs, glorifying themselves in ecstatic glee over non-existing achievements.
Increasingly, a new form of environmental pollution is being added to the existing carnage, noise pollution. All these serious environmental degradations come with massive noise pollution created by mostly itinerant street Christian preachers and traders principally among them are sellers of music CDs and cassettes and drinking bars dotted along busy street pavements. Today what used to be garden cities have turned into garbage cities. Sadly enough, all these callous and inimical activities go on under the watchful eyes of the environmental protection agencies and other law enforcement agencies resulting in the callous environmental degradation and pollution and in the process economically and socially destroying the country with all its attendant health implications and uncertain future for the coming generations.
Today, the United Nations, all responsible governments, anti-corruption and human rights CSOs have regarded the environment and climate change as the number one agenda. Because once the last tree dies, humanity dies. The time has come for our governments and the responsible agencies to take very seriously the callous rate at which the our forests are being depleted by uncontrolled surface mining and unbridled logging especially by foreign interests, and non-scientific farming methods, the unprincipled manner our water bodies are being destroyed by galamsey operators, the greedy manner green belts and mangroves inside our urban areas are being sold out to estate developers and political cronies. The nation should wake up to the filth which is engulfing us and learn from the advanced countries’ filth management.
Concrete walk paths must be constructed and freed from the marauding itinerant commercial operators like street traders, disgusting amateur religious preachers who disturb our peace of mind, drinking bar operators who commandeer walk paths meant for pedestrians. Building regulations must be enforced to ensure that residential and commercial houses have washroom facilities while building codes must be established to make it a requirement for all commercial building above certain floors should have in-built car parks. We as a people must change our attitude towards filth creation and filth management if we are to save the next generation, i.e. if we can even save ourselves and survive the massive destruction of the environment.