Children from Abuesi Methodist Basic School in the Shama District of the Western Region have vowed not to defecate or dump refuse and other wastes along the beaches or into the sea in the community.
The school children have also indicated their readiness to educate their peers and even parents on the hazards dumping of refuse and defecating along the beaches posed to their health and the environment.
They have rather resolved to send their refuse to designated areas in the community on daily basis.
This came to light when the school children embarked on a cleanup exercise organised by an environmentally minded organisation, Friends of the Nation (FoN) at Apo, a fishing community in the Shama District of the Western Region.
Led by their assistant school prefect Agnes Nkansah, the children cleared the beach front and some parts of the community, of filth.
Prior to that, there had been series of community engagement by the FoN to change behaviours among the children in protecting water bodies, including River Pra that passed through the trenches of the district.
Mr. Ebenezer Amukwandoh, the Assembly member for the area, was saddened by the Shama District Assembly’s inability to fix the district’s sanitation challenges.
He bemoaned the fact that most fishing communities in the district lacked places of convenience and had to resort to the beach as alternative.
He was also not happy that a project to create a place for dumping of refuse had halted for years, and thus aggravating the indiscriminate dumping of wastes into the sea.
Mr. Emmanuel Kudor, the Assembly’s Environmental Health Officer, assured that the Assembly had pragmatic plans to solve most of the sanitation challenges in the area.
Mr. William Dankyi, a Project Officer from the Friends of the Nation encouraged the children to be ambassadors of safe water around their communities.
He said water was critical to the living, and stressed the need for people to preserve it.
He said, “Currently the quality of most rivers have been destroyed due to continuous pollution of water bodies with plastics and other wastes.”
“I am happy the children have realised the need to avoid throwing wastes into the sea and rivers so that we will have quality fish and water for use,” he added.
From Emmanuel Opoku, TakoradiÂ