By Priscilla Nimako
Tema, June 17, GNA – Mr Wisdom Aditsey, the Tema Metropolitan Environmental Health Officer, has advised residents of Tema to change their attitudes and stop littering the environment.
Mr Aditsey said attitudinal change was paramount to cleanliness and the prevention of diseases in the communities.
Speaking to the Ghana News Agency (GNA) in an interview, he said the bad sanitation conditions in Tema were a result of the bad attitude of people, adding that this needed to change to ensure a clean environment.
He disclosed that “I have some labourers working under me; every day, I have to organise people to clean the rubbish scattered at the roadside, community-one station, with some packed in sacks at the roundabout and in front of Tema Metropolitan Assembly (TMA), which is dumped there from the various sites at night.”.
He lamented that “for the elder ones, when they litter the compound and I caution thm, they ask, ‘do you sleep here?’; I was attacked before, because I objected to some people littering and urinating around indiscriminately.”
The Environmental Health Officer said if the public developed an attitudinal change towards the way waste was handled, Tema would be one of the cleanest cities in Ghana.
“I am advocating strongly for proper waste handling to be added to the basic school curriculum and for it to be an important issue to be addressed from childhood,” he added.
He noted that it waa difficult to get the elderly to change some of their bad environmental behaviour, but incorporating it into the curriculum would enable the young ones to get the needed education on it and grow with it.
Mr Aditsey stated that many of the illnesses reported at the health facilities were related to bad environmental practices and personal hygiene, stressing that individuals must take care of their environment by properly managing waste and preventing the breeding of mosquitoes, houseflies, and other insects that could cause diseases.
According to him, waste must be properly disposed of, noting that the TMA has systems in place for that; therefore, residents must register with service providers, give their waste to them, and pay instead of littering the environment.
The health officer, however, said that the service provider for community one was not able to go into the densely populated area; therefore, residents sometimes give their waste to informal service providers, who often dump the waste anywhere.
“I have on a number of occasions advised that if they can devise a way for tricycles to enter the sites to collect the rubbish, then they can feed the huge vehicles that cannot enter the community,” he said.
Touching on disease prevention, he said personal hygiene was very important, especially hand washing under running water, which was essential before cooking and serving, as well as other good hygiene practices.
GNA