Local authorities urged to enforce environmental legislations

Accra, June 6, GNA - Weak and poorly enforced environmental legislation by city authorities is a major contributor to the poor sanitation situation in most urban centres, Professor Ralph Mills-Tettey, Registrar, Architects Registration Council of Ghana has said.

Delivering his inaugural lecture as a Fellow of the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences, Prof. Mills-Tettey said responsive regulations that provided the right incentives were necessary to improve on enforcement management and deal with the filth that had engulfed most cities.

There is also need for local government administration to work towards effective waste management systems. His topic was: "Urban Housing and Sanitation - Our Habitat, Our Health."

According to him the poor sanitation practices in the country had led to a situation where the urban authorities were finding it very difficult and unable to cope with the demand for basic services such as water, sanitation, sewage and drainage despite the several donor-assisted projects.

While admitting that some of the local authorities faced serious challenges because of lack of resources, human and material funding and cost recovery in the provision of urban services like garbage collection, Prof Mills-Tettey said there was need for serious government rethink on these issues if the metropolitan, municipal and district assembles were to deliver on their mandate.

Prof. Mills-Tettey said the underlying feature of poor sanitation arose from lack of basic hygiene in sections of the population coupled with the problems of food handling, eating habits in urban housing areas and homes that led to avoidable infections.

He said the country's own colonial past and history up to the present time highlighted the fact that towns and cities by and large had not benefited from developmental plans that had taken a holistic approach to housing and sanitation. The living conditions of the urban poor, especially, are deplorable and sanitation-related problems are major challenges faced by households in many such deprived communities.

Prof. Mills-Tettey cited malaria, a sanitation-related disease, saying the adverse impact of the disease on household production and gross domestic product could be substantial. "Malaria therefore is not only a public health problem but also a developmental problem. At the national level, apart from the negative effect of loss of productivity on the major sectors of the economy, malaria has negative effects on the growth of tourism, investments and trade, especially in endemic regions." Other diseases such as tuberculosis, typhoid fever and amoebic dysentery also have serious health and cost implications to the economy. There is therefore the need for concerted efforts to deal with the emptying of raw sewage by cesspool trucks into the sea, water bodies and isolated locations, saying the serious health implications of this predominant way of raw sewage disposal cannot be underplayed or overemphasized.

Prof. Mills-Tettey said as the country's economy expanded and grew, urbanization would accelerate placing even greater stress on already overburdened systems.

He said population growth had brought about a heavy demand for shelter, which had led to uncontrolled urban sprawl, overcrowding and the proliferation of slums and informal settlements.