MANAGING THE ENVIRONMENT...Sekondi/Takoradi metro take up the challenge (PAGE 29, DEC 8)

ENVIRONMENTAL health and management has been the bane of some metrpolitan assemblies.
Just like Accra, Kumasi and Tamale, the Sekondi/Takoradi metropolitan assembly also faces the problem of solid and liquid waste disposal and management.
Though the magnitude of the problem in the Sekondi/Takoradi metropolis may not be the same as that of Accra and Kumasi, the Environmental Health and Management Department of the Sekondi/Takoradi Metropolitan Assembly (STMA) has envisaged the influx of people to the metropolis as a result of the oil find, with its corresponding increase in public health nuisance.
As a result, the department is beefing up staff strength, ensuring the revision of bye-laws and the intensification of education on the airwaves.
The inability of the STMA to complete its landfill site at Osofokrom is also not helping effective waste disposal and management in the metropolis.
The assembly continues to discharge liquid waste into the sea at Enyiresia, near Sekondi, while solid waste in communal containers sometimes remain at their locations for days before collection, with drainage systems choked with all kinds of materials.
Also, solid waste from households is deposited on the roadside for more than a week before it is collected by private waste management contractors who have been hired to do so by the assembly.
It is against this backdrop that a two-day professional development workshop on sanitation reporting was organised for journalists in the metropolis to appreciate the enormity of environmental/sanitation issues and their effects on the people in the metropolis.
Speaking at the workshop, the Environmental Health Officer of the STMA, Mr Ahmed Sulley, explained that people lived in an environment and depended on the environment for their survival.
He said if those factors were in their natural state and not disturbed, they would pose no danger to people’s health.
According to Mr Sulley, in order to attain good health and have long span of useful life, people must manage the factors which constituted the environment, explaining, “This is known as environmental health.”
The basic requirements for a healthy environment, he said, included a hygienic environment, clean air and adequate and safe food.
He further explained that the surrounding composed of the air we breathed, which was essential for life but could be polluted, as well as the food we ate, which could make us grow but at the same time could be polluted, the water we drank, the soil we grew crops in, the sea and the sand and the rocks.
The environmental health officer described sanitation as a way of life, saying that it was the quality of living that was expressed in a clean home, industry, farm, as well as neighbourhood.
Mr Sulley mentioned some the challenges facing his outfit as the poor attitude of the populace towards sanitation, such as indiscriminate defecation and disposal of refuse.
He also mentioned inadequate staff, enforcement of bye-laws and lack of roadworthy vehicles for the department as challenges confronting it.
According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), environmental health comprises those aspects of human health, including quality of life, that are determined by physical, biological, social and psycho-social factors in the environment (WHO 1993).
It also refers to the theory and practice of assessing, correcting, controlling and preventing those factors which will adversely affect the health of present and future generations.