Ga South residents complain of health complications from ‘secret’ factory

Residents of Chief Papa-Kwadamah Junction Block Factory in the Ga South Municipal Assembly of the Greater Accra Region are up in arms against the owner of a factory said to operate only at night.

The residents complain that the factory, believed to produce plastics, emits toxic waste which appears to be having adverse effects on their health.

According to the frustrated residents, complaints to the Assembly have yielded no results as officials of the National Disaster Management Organisation (NADMO) and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) dispatched to the area to have first-hand information and ascertain the situation do not return with any feedback.

“We feel the owner has bribed these officials,” a resident said when approached by 3news.com.

“The owner is not in Ghana and he comes once in a while and has left the factory to be here to worry us.”

At the time of the visit of the team from 3news.com, there was no activity at the factory. There is no sign to show a factory operates from there.

“They work in the night. There are tenants in the house and most of them move out within a few weeks of coming to stay there because they later realise there is a factory in the compound,” another resident said.

The stench is said to be pungent, making one nauseous.

“It is choky and you feel like coughing and it smells like faeces or chicken faeces,” a young woman said.

She narrated how her father nearly beat up some kids thinking they had eased themselves near their house instead of using the toilet.

Speaking on anonymity, the young woman said a tree nearby absorbs the smell and so during the day, when the factory is asleep, one still smells the stench in the area.

One man said his one-and-a-half-year-old baby girl was recently admitted to the Aplaku Family Clinic.

But the baby had to be transferred to the Bortianor Polyclinic as a result of the severity of the ailment.

“They said she had difficulty in breathing and I suspect it is as a result of the toxic emissions from the factory.”

A woman who has opened a pub in the area says her business has virtually collapsed as no one patronizes the pub.

According to her, all the customers complain of the stench and do not even wait to sit for their drink.

“It is worrying. We want the authorities to come to our aid.”

Efforts to reach the owner of the factory proved futile.

But 3news.com contacted a retired prosecutor, who is said to have been involved in a suit filed by some of the residents against the factory owner.

He said the owner has agreed to move to Agape near Ablekuma but has run short of funds.

“He has bought the land but he says his money finished when he was about to move his gadgets to the new place,” Cephas Kwesi Adorsu told 3news.com.

For now, residents say they cannot deprive the businessman of the factory but all they want is for it to be relocated to an environment where its emissions will not have a devastating effect on human health.