11/9/09
Story: Musah Yahaya Jafaru
SPEAKERS at a community meeting at Maamobi in Accra have appealed to the government to raise the status of the East Ayawaso Sub-metro into a municipality.
They argued that the population of the sub-metro was large enough to grant it a municipality status.
Besides, they said, the people in the area needed to use their own internally generated revenue to develop the area.
The Chairman of the East Ayawaso Council of Zongo Chiefs, Chief Imoro Baba Issa, the director of the East Ayawaso Sub-metro, Mr Divine Ayiezor, President of the Federation of Youth Clubs (FYC), Mr Adam Abdul Fatah, made the appeal at the community’s quarterly meeting organised by the FYC in collaboration with the Legal Resources Centre (LRC).
It was on the theme: “Community Development Through Participation.”
Chief Baba Issa said Nima and Maamobi in the East Ayawaso sub-metro were old settlements, and wondered why new communities such as Ashaiman and Adenta should be given municipality status but not Nima and Maamobi.
He said the people in the area paid taxes to the sub-metro for onward transmission to the Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA).
Chief Baba Issa claimed that the AMA used the taxes to develop other areas whereas the sub-metro had a lot of developmental challenges.
Mr Ayiezor supported the suggestion that Nima and Maamobi be upgraded to a municipality status.
He expressed the belief that the area would see massive development if money generated within the sub-metro was used for its development.
The President of FYC, stressed the need for the government to consider raising the status of the East Ayawaso sub-metro into a municipality since the area lagged behind in terms of development.
He said the development of the area could be well coordinated if the area was given a municipality status.
Touching on democratic participation, a representative of the National Commission for Civic Education, Mr Zac J. Katugu, urged the people to participate effectively in the democratic governance of the country.
He charged the people to be interested in development projects in the area and expose contractors who used substandard materials or diverted materials.
He asked the people not to limit their participation in politics to elections but rather continue to be in the forefront in all spheres of governance.
The acting National Coordinator of the National Youth Council (NYC), Dr Sekou Nkrumah, stressed the need for the youth to be initiative and take advantage of the numerous opportunities in the country.
A governance consultant, Mr Ahmed Khalid, urged the people to read the country’s constitution to know their rights and responsibilities as citizens.
Other issues discussed at the meeting included the need for the people to coordinate efforts at promoting education and fighting the cyber fraud (’Sakawa’) menace in the area.
Friday, September 11, 2009
Local firm processes bio-diesel from sunflower
18/8/09
Story: Musah Yahaya Jafaru & Jasmine Arku
A local company, Tragrimacs Sunflower Ghana Limited, has set up a plant at Tema that processes 5,000 gallons of bio-diesel a day from sunflower.
The oil expeller processes sunflower seeds into crude oil while the bio-diesel processor refines the crude oil into bio-diesel, suitable for vehicles.
The bio-diesel produced from the sunflower is offered for sale, mainly to owners of tractors for farming and other purposes.
The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) supported the project with $25,000 under its Global Environment Facility Small Grants Programme (GEF-SGP).
The Chief Executive Officer of Tragrimacs, Mr Issah Suleiman, made this known to the Daily Graphic after an inspection tour of a 40-acre sunflower plantation at Gomoa Adzentem in the Central Region.
The plantation has a portion for beekeeping for the production of honey.
According to Mr Suleiman, bio-diesel produced from sunflower had several advantages over other bio-diesel products.
For instance, he said bio-diesel from sunflower emit less carbon, thus making it environmentally friendly.
He said the decision to set up the plant to process sunflower into bio-diesel was necessitated by the huge demand and the increasing cost of fuel in the country.
Mr Suleiman appealed to the government to adopt the bio-diesel produced from sunflower as an alternative source of energy in the country.
He asked the government to work towards achieving five per cent production of bio-diesel from sunflower by 2015, and indicated that it would bring down the cost of fuel by 10 per cent.
The National Programme Co-ordinator of the UNDP GEF-SGP, Mr George B. Ortsin, said his outfit had provided funds to three categories of farmers to go into sunflower cultivation, processing and marketing.
The Chief of Gomoa Adzentem, Nana Asare I, who provided the land for the cultivation of sunflower, promised to offer more land to farmers to go into sunflower cultivation in the area.
Story: Musah Yahaya Jafaru & Jasmine Arku
A local company, Tragrimacs Sunflower Ghana Limited, has set up a plant at Tema that processes 5,000 gallons of bio-diesel a day from sunflower.
The oil expeller processes sunflower seeds into crude oil while the bio-diesel processor refines the crude oil into bio-diesel, suitable for vehicles.
The bio-diesel produced from the sunflower is offered for sale, mainly to owners of tractors for farming and other purposes.
The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) supported the project with $25,000 under its Global Environment Facility Small Grants Programme (GEF-SGP).
The Chief Executive Officer of Tragrimacs, Mr Issah Suleiman, made this known to the Daily Graphic after an inspection tour of a 40-acre sunflower plantation at Gomoa Adzentem in the Central Region.
The plantation has a portion for beekeeping for the production of honey.
According to Mr Suleiman, bio-diesel produced from sunflower had several advantages over other bio-diesel products.
For instance, he said bio-diesel from sunflower emit less carbon, thus making it environmentally friendly.
He said the decision to set up the plant to process sunflower into bio-diesel was necessitated by the huge demand and the increasing cost of fuel in the country.
Mr Suleiman appealed to the government to adopt the bio-diesel produced from sunflower as an alternative source of energy in the country.
He asked the government to work towards achieving five per cent production of bio-diesel from sunflower by 2015, and indicated that it would bring down the cost of fuel by 10 per cent.
The National Programme Co-ordinator of the UNDP GEF-SGP, Mr George B. Ortsin, said his outfit had provided funds to three categories of farmers to go into sunflower cultivation, processing and marketing.
The Chief of Gomoa Adzentem, Nana Asare I, who provided the land for the cultivation of sunflower, promised to offer more land to farmers to go into sunflower cultivation in the area.
Steel company installs new equipment
Story: Musah Yahaya Jafaru
SPECIAL Steels Limited (SSL), a Tema-based iron rods manufacturing company, has begun the installation of a new pollution control system to control the emission of exhaust gas to a safe level.
The pollution control system has an in-built chamber that cools exhaust gas after which the cold gas enters a bag filter unit which removes toxic elements from it.
Consequently, SSL has suspended the melting of iron scraps in the furnace to allow for the completion of the installation work by the end of September, this year.
This was evident during an inspection tour of the company on Thursday, following media reports of excess emission of smoke by the company.
The Director of SSL, Mr Vinod Rajan, told the Daily Graphic that the “objectionable” emission was due to some technical failure of the existing pollution control system.
He said the company had rectified the situation by changing the existing blower and replacing it with a higher capacity blower in the exhaust system.
Besides, Mr Rajan said, the company had modified the vantury, scrubber and fume suction hood, to further reduce the smoke.
He said the installation of the new pollution control system was also to meet the increased production at the company as it was to increase production from 2,000 tonnes per month to 4,000 tonnes per month.
Mr Rajan said the SSL had written to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) outlining the pollution control measures it was undertaking.
A copy of the letter dated August 11, 2009, said, “We humbly request that during the period of installation and test-run of the new pollution control system, the EPA deploys and runs the dust monitoring equipment the results of which will help us understand the level of performance of newly installed system and modify/rectify the stages if the need arises.”
When contacted, a Deputy Director at the EPA, Mr Lambert Faabehuon, confirmed the ongoing installation at the company and the receipt of a road map to control the emission from SSL.
He said the EPA had mounted testing equipment to monitor the emission level at every stage of the installation.
SPECIAL Steels Limited (SSL), a Tema-based iron rods manufacturing company, has begun the installation of a new pollution control system to control the emission of exhaust gas to a safe level.
The pollution control system has an in-built chamber that cools exhaust gas after which the cold gas enters a bag filter unit which removes toxic elements from it.
Consequently, SSL has suspended the melting of iron scraps in the furnace to allow for the completion of the installation work by the end of September, this year.
This was evident during an inspection tour of the company on Thursday, following media reports of excess emission of smoke by the company.
The Director of SSL, Mr Vinod Rajan, told the Daily Graphic that the “objectionable” emission was due to some technical failure of the existing pollution control system.
He said the company had rectified the situation by changing the existing blower and replacing it with a higher capacity blower in the exhaust system.
Besides, Mr Rajan said, the company had modified the vantury, scrubber and fume suction hood, to further reduce the smoke.
He said the installation of the new pollution control system was also to meet the increased production at the company as it was to increase production from 2,000 tonnes per month to 4,000 tonnes per month.
Mr Rajan said the SSL had written to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) outlining the pollution control measures it was undertaking.
A copy of the letter dated August 11, 2009, said, “We humbly request that during the period of installation and test-run of the new pollution control system, the EPA deploys and runs the dust monitoring equipment the results of which will help us understand the level of performance of newly installed system and modify/rectify the stages if the need arises.”
When contacted, a Deputy Director at the EPA, Mr Lambert Faabehuon, confirmed the ongoing installation at the company and the receipt of a road map to control the emission from SSL.
He said the EPA had mounted testing equipment to monitor the emission level at every stage of the installation.
Youth advised to pursue education
Story: Musah Yahaya Jafaru
(Youth advised to strive for quality education)
THE youth have been advised to seek quality education and acquire employable skills, since that was the only way they would become responsible citizens.
A member of the governing council of the Ghana Muslim Academy (GMA), Hajj Saeed Haroun Zagoun, who made the call, said the youth were likely to engaged in social vices if they did not have any formal education or employable skills.
Hajj Zagoun was speaking when the GMA donated food items worth hundreds of Ghana cedis to some orphans at Mamobi in Accra towards the observance of the Ramadan fast.
The items included rice, sugar and cooking oil. Two organisations - the Foundation for Human Rights and the Freedom and Humanitarian Assistance (IHH), of Turkey and WEFA of Germany funded the purchase of the food items.
Hajj Zagoun said the youth were the future leaders and stressed the need for parents to assist them to acquire both quality education.
That, he said, was the legacy they could leave behind for their children.
However, Hajj Zagoun said it was regrettable that some Muslim parents shirked their responsibility to send their children to school or assist them to acquire any employable skills.
Such youth, he said, ended up as miscreants who engaged in cyber fraud or ‘Sakawa’ and other crimes.
Hajj Zagoun reminded the orphans that they could assume important positions in future and also support others if they pursued both secular and Islamic education.
The President of the GMA, Nurudeen Alhassan, said the donation of the food items was an attempt to support the orphans to start and break the fast with ease.
He commended the IHH and WEFA for their support to the orphans, which he said would ease their feeding problems.
(Youth advised to strive for quality education)
THE youth have been advised to seek quality education and acquire employable skills, since that was the only way they would become responsible citizens.
A member of the governing council of the Ghana Muslim Academy (GMA), Hajj Saeed Haroun Zagoun, who made the call, said the youth were likely to engaged in social vices if they did not have any formal education or employable skills.
Hajj Zagoun was speaking when the GMA donated food items worth hundreds of Ghana cedis to some orphans at Mamobi in Accra towards the observance of the Ramadan fast.
The items included rice, sugar and cooking oil. Two organisations - the Foundation for Human Rights and the Freedom and Humanitarian Assistance (IHH), of Turkey and WEFA of Germany funded the purchase of the food items.
Hajj Zagoun said the youth were the future leaders and stressed the need for parents to assist them to acquire both quality education.
That, he said, was the legacy they could leave behind for their children.
However, Hajj Zagoun said it was regrettable that some Muslim parents shirked their responsibility to send their children to school or assist them to acquire any employable skills.
Such youth, he said, ended up as miscreants who engaged in cyber fraud or ‘Sakawa’ and other crimes.
Hajj Zagoun reminded the orphans that they could assume important positions in future and also support others if they pursued both secular and Islamic education.
The President of the GMA, Nurudeen Alhassan, said the donation of the food items was an attempt to support the orphans to start and break the fast with ease.
He commended the IHH and WEFA for their support to the orphans, which he said would ease their feeding problems.
Let's mentor female students
Sept 8, 09
Story: Musah Yahaya Jafaru & Fauziatu Adam
A JUSTICE of the Commercial Court, Mrs Justice Margaret Welbourne, has urged women professionals to mentor female students to achieve academic excellence and occupy key positions in the public and private sectors.
She said although women formed more than 50 per cent of Ghana’s population, very few of them occupied important positions in the judiciary, banking, politics and other professions.
Mrs Justice Welbourne was launching the ‘Women Mentoring Walk 2010’ in Accra on Thursday. The mentoring walk is a programme that brings together accomplished and experienced women to mentor younger women to achieve their potential in various professions.
The mentoring walk, the second in the series, is being organised by the Mentoring Women Ghana, a non-governmental organisation.
Mrs Justice Welbourne noted that women professionals were confronted with challenges, but asked them to make time to attend to up-and-coming females.
“Women need to mentor and encourage each other as they climb the educational ladder. I know you have challenges, but you need to help the young ones to come up,” he said.
She stressed that the young females should be encouraged to climb higher on the educational ladder, adding, “The sky should be the limit.”
According to Mrs Justice Welbourne, the Chief Justice, Mrs Justice Georgina Wood, had launched her own mentoring programme for senior high school students, which seeks to encourage them to opt for the legal profession.
The Minister of Women and Children’s Affairs, Ms Akua Sena Dansua, in a speech read on her behalf, re-echoed the need for people with higher education, advanced entrepreneurial skills and professional expertise “to share this important knowledge and skills with the younger ones”.
“In that way, they can avoid repeating the mistakes made by us so as that they can make progress at a faster rate,” she stressed.
Ms Dansua suggested that in mentoring, such values as discipline, diligence, self-control, self-confidence, honesty, academic excellence, good time management, physical fitness, philanthropy and sharing were instilled in the mentees.
Likewise, she said, the mentees should be made aware that success in academic, business, or any other field did not mean much without good moral values.
Ms Dansua said the mentoring programme would be more suitable for graduates of universities, polytechnics, training colleges, senior high schools and their equivalent, as well as other adolescents and middle age women, as they could imbibe useful values and be better equipped to face the challenges of time.
The Chief Executive Officer of the Mentoring Women Ghana, Ms Brigitte Dzogbenuku, said most participants had established fruitful relationships, with some getting jobs in the first mentoring programme this year.
She said the 2010 mentoring programme promised to be bigger, and indicated that her outfit would receive applications and conduct interviews to ensure that they were truly interested in the programme.
Ms Dzogbenuku said 40 people who would qualify would be assembled in Accra for 10 days beginning from February 24, 2010. They would visit and interact with women in leadership positions in the public and private sectors. Subsequently the mentoring walk would be held on Saturday February 27, 2010.
Story: Musah Yahaya Jafaru & Fauziatu Adam
A JUSTICE of the Commercial Court, Mrs Justice Margaret Welbourne, has urged women professionals to mentor female students to achieve academic excellence and occupy key positions in the public and private sectors.
She said although women formed more than 50 per cent of Ghana’s population, very few of them occupied important positions in the judiciary, banking, politics and other professions.
Mrs Justice Welbourne was launching the ‘Women Mentoring Walk 2010’ in Accra on Thursday. The mentoring walk is a programme that brings together accomplished and experienced women to mentor younger women to achieve their potential in various professions.
The mentoring walk, the second in the series, is being organised by the Mentoring Women Ghana, a non-governmental organisation.
Mrs Justice Welbourne noted that women professionals were confronted with challenges, but asked them to make time to attend to up-and-coming females.
“Women need to mentor and encourage each other as they climb the educational ladder. I know you have challenges, but you need to help the young ones to come up,” he said.
She stressed that the young females should be encouraged to climb higher on the educational ladder, adding, “The sky should be the limit.”
According to Mrs Justice Welbourne, the Chief Justice, Mrs Justice Georgina Wood, had launched her own mentoring programme for senior high school students, which seeks to encourage them to opt for the legal profession.
The Minister of Women and Children’s Affairs, Ms Akua Sena Dansua, in a speech read on her behalf, re-echoed the need for people with higher education, advanced entrepreneurial skills and professional expertise “to share this important knowledge and skills with the younger ones”.
“In that way, they can avoid repeating the mistakes made by us so as that they can make progress at a faster rate,” she stressed.
Ms Dansua suggested that in mentoring, such values as discipline, diligence, self-control, self-confidence, honesty, academic excellence, good time management, physical fitness, philanthropy and sharing were instilled in the mentees.
Likewise, she said, the mentees should be made aware that success in academic, business, or any other field did not mean much without good moral values.
Ms Dansua said the mentoring programme would be more suitable for graduates of universities, polytechnics, training colleges, senior high schools and their equivalent, as well as other adolescents and middle age women, as they could imbibe useful values and be better equipped to face the challenges of time.
The Chief Executive Officer of the Mentoring Women Ghana, Ms Brigitte Dzogbenuku, said most participants had established fruitful relationships, with some getting jobs in the first mentoring programme this year.
She said the 2010 mentoring programme promised to be bigger, and indicated that her outfit would receive applications and conduct interviews to ensure that they were truly interested in the programme.
Ms Dzogbenuku said 40 people who would qualify would be assembled in Accra for 10 days beginning from February 24, 2010. They would visit and interact with women in leadership positions in the public and private sectors. Subsequently the mentoring walk would be held on Saturday February 27, 2010.
Police Hospital choked with unclaimed bodies
Sept 5, 2009
Story: Musah Yahaya Jafaru
AUTHORITIES at the Police Hospital are considering cremating the 400 unclaimed bodies at the hospital’s morgue, following the refusal of the people of Bortianor to allow a mass burial of the bodies at the Mile 11 Cemetery.
The Medical Director of the hospital, DCOP Dr Godfried Asiamah, therefore, appealed to organisations and philanthropists to support the hospital authorities with some funds to enable them to carry out the cremation.
The hospital authorities were in the news early August when the people of Bortianor refused to allow them to bury the unclaimed bodies at the cemetery at Mile 11.
Meanwhile, Dr Asiamah said the authorities of the hospital had appealed to the Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA) to secure a land for them to bury bodies.
He said if the AMA failed to secure the land, the hospital authorities would not have any option but to cremate the bodies, since the continuous storage of the bodies could break down the fridges of the mortuary.
According to him, some of the bodies were being kept on the floor in the cold room instead of the fridges.
In an earlier interview, Dr Asiamah said the unclaimed bodies which had been at the mortuary for more than three months comprised mainly accident victims, street dwellers and insane persons whose identities were difficult to establish.
He said the hospital took steps to bury all the unidentified bodies in mass graves but the effort fell through when the people of Bortianor refused.
DCOP Dr Asiamah attributed the trend to road accidents in which those who died were brought to the hospital by the police or volunteers on the scene.
Additionally, he said whenever people died in the streets and their relatives did not come forward to claim the bodies, the police collected and brought them to the hospital’s mortuary.
“Numerous people die in the streets. They are picked up by the police and they end up in our mortuary,” he stressed, pointing out that the difficulty was always with people who died in such circumstances without any identification tags on them.
DCOP Dr Asiamah said the medical officers conducted post-mortem, while the investigative team conducted investigations into the circumstances leading to the death.
Thereafter, he said, his outfit made announcements in the media about the dead bodies for their relatives to come out to identify and claim them.
However, he said, on many occasions people did not come forward to identify and claim the bodies.
The Medical Director said the police were compelled under the circumstances to organise mass burials for the unclaimed bodies to decongest the mortuary.
Story: Musah Yahaya Jafaru
AUTHORITIES at the Police Hospital are considering cremating the 400 unclaimed bodies at the hospital’s morgue, following the refusal of the people of Bortianor to allow a mass burial of the bodies at the Mile 11 Cemetery.
The Medical Director of the hospital, DCOP Dr Godfried Asiamah, therefore, appealed to organisations and philanthropists to support the hospital authorities with some funds to enable them to carry out the cremation.
The hospital authorities were in the news early August when the people of Bortianor refused to allow them to bury the unclaimed bodies at the cemetery at Mile 11.
Meanwhile, Dr Asiamah said the authorities of the hospital had appealed to the Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA) to secure a land for them to bury bodies.
He said if the AMA failed to secure the land, the hospital authorities would not have any option but to cremate the bodies, since the continuous storage of the bodies could break down the fridges of the mortuary.
According to him, some of the bodies were being kept on the floor in the cold room instead of the fridges.
In an earlier interview, Dr Asiamah said the unclaimed bodies which had been at the mortuary for more than three months comprised mainly accident victims, street dwellers and insane persons whose identities were difficult to establish.
He said the hospital took steps to bury all the unidentified bodies in mass graves but the effort fell through when the people of Bortianor refused.
DCOP Dr Asiamah attributed the trend to road accidents in which those who died were brought to the hospital by the police or volunteers on the scene.
Additionally, he said whenever people died in the streets and their relatives did not come forward to claim the bodies, the police collected and brought them to the hospital’s mortuary.
“Numerous people die in the streets. They are picked up by the police and they end up in our mortuary,” he stressed, pointing out that the difficulty was always with people who died in such circumstances without any identification tags on them.
DCOP Dr Asiamah said the medical officers conducted post-mortem, while the investigative team conducted investigations into the circumstances leading to the death.
Thereafter, he said, his outfit made announcements in the media about the dead bodies for their relatives to come out to identify and claim them.
However, he said, on many occasions people did not come forward to identify and claim the bodies.
The Medical Director said the police were compelled under the circumstances to organise mass burials for the unclaimed bodies to decongest the mortuary.
Inside Sodom and Gomorrah - the ugly side
Sept 5, 2009
Story: Musah Yahaya Jafaru
MANY were those who heaved a sigh of relief when the government announced its intention to evict the more than 40,000 squatters of Sodom and Gomorrah. The reason is that people shared the government’s position that the squatters there are a danger to national security.
As the name connotes, Sodom and Gomorrah, located within the central business district of Accra, gives true meaning to the Biblical Sodom and Gomorrah, a communities that were destroyed by God because of their grave sins.
So in effect, whenever a community navigates towards the way of the Biblical Sodom and Gomorrah, that community is bound to face the ‘wrath’ of God or that of the government of the day.
The Ghana Sodom and Gomorrah, formerly called Old Fadama or Ayalolo, became a shelter for some displaced people from northern Ghana fleeing the Kokomba-Nanumba war in the 1980s. Ever since then, more people, mainly from the three regions of northern Ghana, have also joined the fray.
Intelligence reports indicate that the squatters, who are divided along political, ethnic and chieftaincy lines, illicitly acquire small arms and light weapons, which they use to attack one another at the least provocation.
They are also alleged to be smuggling the weapons to their people up north in breach of national security.
The recent clashes between people suspected to be supporters of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) and the New Patriotic Party (NPP) and from the Abudu and Andani Gates at the Kokomba Market that resulted in the loss of four lives, gives credence to the porous security situation at Sodom and Gomorrah.
Police reports indicate that of the number of suspected criminals rounded up in police and army swoop at Sodom and Gomorrah some time past, a number of criminals were identified and some of them were later identified as armed robbers. The police found “wee” and cocaine on some of them. There have been occasions when wanted criminals, including murderers wanted by the police, have been arrested at Sodom and Gomorrah.
Rape and defilement are common occurrence at the slum.
A walk through the slum paints a picture of disorder, desperation and a bleak future. People virtually sleep in filth. The ramshackle wooden structures stand close to choked gutters.
There are no roads while the walkways are right in people’s homes or even rooms.
Interestingly, there are squatters who claim to own the land, because of the structures they have put up. They take rent from other squatters.
There are indeed some youth as old as 18 who were born and bred in the area. School is of no essence to the squatters, although they have a nursery that some single parents ‘dump’ their children there to relieve themselves of the burden of having to cater for them.
The slum has a large number of chop bars and beer bars. Marijuana (wee) and other narcotic drugs are sold and smoked in the open, with the young ladies competing with their male partners.
There are people who sell cooked food there under very unhygienic conditions, further complicating the precarious health situation there.
The disorderly nature of Sodom and Gomorrah makes it susceptible to fire outbreaks; the slum records not less three fire outbreaks in a year, which destroy lives and property.
Interestingly, hardly does the fire settle down than the squatters begin to reconstruct their burnt structures. The reason is that if they delay, other squatters will trespass.
Due to the almost non-existent roads, fire officers from the Ghana National Fire Service are not able to access the road to put out fire; they are forced under the circumstances to break into some of the structures to get to the fire, a situation that allows the fire to rage for hours.
Another worrying scenario is that the activities of the squatters of Sodom and Gomorrah obstruct work on the Korle Lagoon Ecological Restoration Project (KLERP). The squatters dump solid waste into the lagoon, thus compelling the engineers working on the KLERP to use excavators to clear the waste at a huge cost to the state.
Some of the structures have been constructed at the banks of the lagoon. According to the engineers, the squatters threaten them anytime they speak against their indiscriminate disposal of solid waste.
The Director of the Metropolitan Public Health Department, Dr Simpson Boateng, in an earlier visit to the slum, reportedly said that the squatters would be evicted because their “persistent dumping of refuse and human excreta into the Korle canal by the squatters at Sodom and Gomorrah is undermining work on the KLERP”.
The Greater Accra Regional Minister, Nii Armah Ashietey, has indicated the government’s resolve to evict the squatters without any form of compensation or relocation. That is a bold decision. But the question many people are asking is whether the government has the political will to carry through this laudable exercise of nipping in the bud the security threat that the squatters of Sodom and Gomorrah pose to the nation.
It is the responsibility of the government to provide security to all Ghanaians, and that requires of the government to take decisive action to deal with any group of people who threaten national security.
The squatters are asking the government to relocate them somewhere, since they do not have any financial means to rent rooms in other parts of Accra. They are also not ready to go back to northern Ghana.
Some people have cautioned the government not to rush in evicting the squatters, since it could lead to the creation of smaller slums in parts of the city.
Human rights activists also feel that the government must of necessity try to relocate the squatters, since they have a right to shelter. They have blamed the government for allowing the people to stay there for long and assumed some right to their settlement there.
That argument is sound. But is the government bound to perform a task that it has not initiated, although the government could be said to have encouraged it by not acting fast?
It may not be out of place, though, if the government out of consideration finds a place to relocate the squatters, provided it has the means.
But the government could not be faulted in a way for evicting the squatters of Sodom and Gomorrah. But when is the axe going to fall?
Story: Musah Yahaya Jafaru
MANY were those who heaved a sigh of relief when the government announced its intention to evict the more than 40,000 squatters of Sodom and Gomorrah. The reason is that people shared the government’s position that the squatters there are a danger to national security.
As the name connotes, Sodom and Gomorrah, located within the central business district of Accra, gives true meaning to the Biblical Sodom and Gomorrah, a communities that were destroyed by God because of their grave sins.
So in effect, whenever a community navigates towards the way of the Biblical Sodom and Gomorrah, that community is bound to face the ‘wrath’ of God or that of the government of the day.
The Ghana Sodom and Gomorrah, formerly called Old Fadama or Ayalolo, became a shelter for some displaced people from northern Ghana fleeing the Kokomba-Nanumba war in the 1980s. Ever since then, more people, mainly from the three regions of northern Ghana, have also joined the fray.
Intelligence reports indicate that the squatters, who are divided along political, ethnic and chieftaincy lines, illicitly acquire small arms and light weapons, which they use to attack one another at the least provocation.
They are also alleged to be smuggling the weapons to their people up north in breach of national security.
The recent clashes between people suspected to be supporters of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) and the New Patriotic Party (NPP) and from the Abudu and Andani Gates at the Kokomba Market that resulted in the loss of four lives, gives credence to the porous security situation at Sodom and Gomorrah.
Police reports indicate that of the number of suspected criminals rounded up in police and army swoop at Sodom and Gomorrah some time past, a number of criminals were identified and some of them were later identified as armed robbers. The police found “wee” and cocaine on some of them. There have been occasions when wanted criminals, including murderers wanted by the police, have been arrested at Sodom and Gomorrah.
Rape and defilement are common occurrence at the slum.
A walk through the slum paints a picture of disorder, desperation and a bleak future. People virtually sleep in filth. The ramshackle wooden structures stand close to choked gutters.
There are no roads while the walkways are right in people’s homes or even rooms.
Interestingly, there are squatters who claim to own the land, because of the structures they have put up. They take rent from other squatters.
There are indeed some youth as old as 18 who were born and bred in the area. School is of no essence to the squatters, although they have a nursery that some single parents ‘dump’ their children there to relieve themselves of the burden of having to cater for them.
The slum has a large number of chop bars and beer bars. Marijuana (wee) and other narcotic drugs are sold and smoked in the open, with the young ladies competing with their male partners.
There are people who sell cooked food there under very unhygienic conditions, further complicating the precarious health situation there.
The disorderly nature of Sodom and Gomorrah makes it susceptible to fire outbreaks; the slum records not less three fire outbreaks in a year, which destroy lives and property.
Interestingly, hardly does the fire settle down than the squatters begin to reconstruct their burnt structures. The reason is that if they delay, other squatters will trespass.
Due to the almost non-existent roads, fire officers from the Ghana National Fire Service are not able to access the road to put out fire; they are forced under the circumstances to break into some of the structures to get to the fire, a situation that allows the fire to rage for hours.
Another worrying scenario is that the activities of the squatters of Sodom and Gomorrah obstruct work on the Korle Lagoon Ecological Restoration Project (KLERP). The squatters dump solid waste into the lagoon, thus compelling the engineers working on the KLERP to use excavators to clear the waste at a huge cost to the state.
Some of the structures have been constructed at the banks of the lagoon. According to the engineers, the squatters threaten them anytime they speak against their indiscriminate disposal of solid waste.
The Director of the Metropolitan Public Health Department, Dr Simpson Boateng, in an earlier visit to the slum, reportedly said that the squatters would be evicted because their “persistent dumping of refuse and human excreta into the Korle canal by the squatters at Sodom and Gomorrah is undermining work on the KLERP”.
The Greater Accra Regional Minister, Nii Armah Ashietey, has indicated the government’s resolve to evict the squatters without any form of compensation or relocation. That is a bold decision. But the question many people are asking is whether the government has the political will to carry through this laudable exercise of nipping in the bud the security threat that the squatters of Sodom and Gomorrah pose to the nation.
It is the responsibility of the government to provide security to all Ghanaians, and that requires of the government to take decisive action to deal with any group of people who threaten national security.
The squatters are asking the government to relocate them somewhere, since they do not have any financial means to rent rooms in other parts of Accra. They are also not ready to go back to northern Ghana.
Some people have cautioned the government not to rush in evicting the squatters, since it could lead to the creation of smaller slums in parts of the city.
Human rights activists also feel that the government must of necessity try to relocate the squatters, since they have a right to shelter. They have blamed the government for allowing the people to stay there for long and assumed some right to their settlement there.
That argument is sound. But is the government bound to perform a task that it has not initiated, although the government could be said to have encouraged it by not acting fast?
It may not be out of place, though, if the government out of consideration finds a place to relocate the squatters, provided it has the means.
But the government could not be faulted in a way for evicting the squatters of Sodom and Gomorrah. But when is the axe going to fall?
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