By Caleb Kuleke
Ho, Feb. 26, GNA-The Volta Regional Office of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will commence its compliance enforcement exercise from March 2024.
The exercise is to ensure that all undertakings are in compliance with the provisions of the EPA’s Act.
They include the Environmental Protection Agency Act, 1994 (Act 490), the
Environmental Assessment Regulations, 1999 (LI 1652), Fee and Charges (Miscellaneous Provision) Act, 2022 (Act 1080), the Hazardous and Electronic Waste Control and Management Act, 2016 (Act 917), and the Hazardous Electronic and Other Wastes (Classification), Control and Management Regulations, 2016 (LI 2250)
By the EPA’s Act, an undertaking means any enterprise, activity, scheme of development, construction, project, structure, building, work, investment, plan, programme and any modification.
It also includes extension, abandonment, demolition, rehabilitation or decommissioning of such undertaking, the implementation of which may have a significant impact on the environment.
Mr Hope Smith Lomotey, Volta Regional Director of the EPA in a document signed and copied to the Ghana News Agency urged the public to ensure that any undertaking be it government or private owned is regularised.
He said enforcement notices had been served on some facilities and the processes were still ongoing.
Mr Lomotey said failure to comply with the notice or directive served by the Agency would lead to the closure of the facilities and prosecution.
He urged the citizens to visit the EPA office to regularise undertakings be they government or privately owned that had commenced construction without an environmental permit, operating without an environmental permit, operating with an expired environmental permit, and operating in non-compliance with an environmental permit.
GNA