Government Takes Steps To Address Increasing Deforestation

The government of Ghana is steadily following through with its promise to distribute 50,000 gas cylinders and other accessories to citizens living in rural communities where access to fuel for domestic purposes is largely limited to wood and charcoal.

This policy by the administration of President John Dramani Mahama is intended to reduce the alarming rate of deforestation and provide a cleaner, healthier and safer form of cooking fuel for rural women. 

Dubbed “The Rural LPG Promotion Programme”, it is also expected to improve and increase access to liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) in rural areas from the 13% in 2012 to 15% by the end of 2016. 

“The goal of the policy is to reverse the detrimental effect of the continuous burning of more than 13 million tonnes of firewood annually and reduce respiratory diseases acquired from the use of firewood” Petroleum Minister Emmanuel Armah-Kofi Buah said this known when he presented 6,000 gas cylinders and accessories such as stoves and regulators to the Savelugu-Nanton Municipality, Saboba and Gushiegu Districts at Savelugu in the Northern Region.    

Ghana’s forests coverage according to the Forestry Commission in the early part of the 20th Century was estimated at 8.2 million hectares. This has reduced to less than 1.6 million hectares at an annual rate of loss of 65,000 hectares. The annual forest depletion is also quantified to be 3% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). 

Compared to Southern Ghana, the Northern part of the country is however the most degraded area. For instance, the 1952 Forest Inventory Record of Ghana indicated that the total tree cover in the entire north was 41,600 km2, representing 46% of its total land area. By 1996 approximately 40% of the woodland was estimated to have been exposed to acute soil erosion and other forms of human activities. Thus, about 38,000 hectares of tree cover are lost yearly in the Upper West, Upper East and Northern Regions.

The increasing lost of vegetative and forest cover through human activities such as bush burning and indiscriminate felling of trees affect agriculture, human health, forests and game reserves, water resources. Such activities lead to increasing weather temperatures/heat wave, torrential rains/flood, drought, outbreak of epidemics (CSM), influx of pests and among others due to the unpredictable nature of the weather (climate change).

To ensure that beneficiary districts have constant supply of LPG and to prevent users from going back to the use of firewood, Mr. Buah said the ministry would also partner with LPG marketing companies and local dealers to set up of mini-refill gas plants in rural areas. 

He urged local dealers and businessmen to take advantage of business opportunities provided and expand the LPG business to the reach of people in remote areas in the districts by setting up mini-refill gas sale outlets.

“The nation currently has a sufficient supply of LPG and the operation of the Gas Processing Plant will ensure a constant flow of LPG for all Ghanaians especially when the new oil fields come on-stream”, Mr. Buah stressed.

The Member of Parliament for Savelugu Constituency Hajia Mary Salifu Boforo and First Deputy Majority Chief Whip of Ghana’s Parliament, lauded the initiative by the government and urged women in her constituency to embrace the use of gas and stove for cooking.

She also appealed to the Ministry of Petroleum to partner with the Ghana National Fire Service in the beneficiary districts to continuously roll out and sustain educational programmes on the safe use of the gas cylinders and cooking stoves.

Meanwhile so far, about six districts across the country have benefited from the programme including Nzema East, Ellembelle and Jomoro Districts in the Western Region of Ghana.

Looming Sanitation Crisis In Tamale

Residents of Tamale Metropolis in the Northern Region of Ghana would have to brace themselves for more serious insanitary conditions in their neighbourhoods following the Assembly’s announcement that it currently has no money to deal with the monumental sanitation problem in the city.

The Assembly needs about 4 million Ghana cedis annually to effectively manage sanitation in the sprawling metropolis. But at the moment, officials can only raise 2 million Ghana cedis, Metropolitan Chief Executive (MCE) Abdul-Hanan Rahman Gundadow disclosed this when he addressed citizens at the Assembly’s 2015 maiden Town Hall Meeting organised in collaboration with Northern Development Society.

Town Hall Meetings per the Local Government Act (Act 462, 1993) are supposed to be held twice in a year by all Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies to sensitize citizens on their development plans and achievements during the course of the year and to make projects for the coming year.

Town Hall Meetings also afford citizens the opportunity to ask questions on projects being executed by the Assemblies and their development partners, make reviews and suggestions to ongoing programmes.

A Programmes Officer of ActionAid Ghana, Alia Mimuni strongly advocated for the Tamale Metropolitan Assembly to charge people who generate waste in their homes and at their work places. Ms. Mimuni believed making people pay a fee for the waste they generate would ease the financial burden on the Assembly. 

She also raised concern over the Assembly’s poor management of its landfill site located at Gbalahi in the Sagnarigu District. According to her, the other engineered landfill sites in the country such as Accra and Kumasi were well maintained compared to Tamale’s. 

However, in a response to Ms Alia Mimuni, Mr. Gundadow said the Assembly was currently in talks with Bola Waste Solutions, a waste management company based in Accra to ensure the effective and efficient management of huge volumes of solid waste generated in the metropolis. 

According to him, the Assembly was reviewing the proposals of the company and would soon decide whether to engage them or not. He was however quick to add that Bola Waste Solutions would only recycle the waste into compost and sell it to farmers if they were eventually engaged. 

Mr. Gundadow further indicated that the Assembly had resolved to discourage the use of the landfill site approach in the management of waste due to the high cost of maintenance and environmental hazards it posed to residents in the nearby communities.

In spite of the challenges being faced by the Assembly, a number of public toilet facilities have been constructed to address one part of the sanitation problem in the city. They include the construction of 12no. 20-seater aqua privy toilets with perimeter fencing at Changshegu, Chansherigu, Tuutingli, Gumbihini, Koblimahagu, Lamashegu North, Dabokpa-Kalariga, Dakpema Primary, Nalung-fong, Nyohini Binabani, Sanzerigu, Banvim and Kalpohini.

The rest are located at Business Senior High School, Ghana Senior High School, St. Peters Primary School, Sakasaka Cluster of Schools, Jerigu Primary and Junior High Schools, Anwar-Rahman Islamic School as well as Choggu, Chagnaayili, Kanvili, Dohinaayili, Nakpanzoo and Dungu communities.

Meanwhile, Mr. Gundadow acknowledged the support of various youth groups, security agencies as well as chiefs towards the monthly organisation of National Sanitation Day programmes in the metropolis. He however bemoaned the high level of apathy among some citizens and residents towards the programme and cleaning of their own homes. 

He therefore called for an attitudinal change amongst citizens and urged parents to inculcate in their children, a sense of decency and environmental cleanliness. “Opinion leaders, heads of decentralised departments, traditional and religious leaders should also complement the efforts of the Assembly by organizing periodic cleanup exercises in their communities and places of work to enable the metropolis improve upon its sanitation situation”, he urged.   

ACEP Calls For Even Distribution Of Oil Money In Ghana

The Executive Director of the African Centre for Energy Policy (ACEP), Dr. Mohammed Amin Adam has called for an even regional allocation and distribution of Ghana’s oil revenue after it emerged that the poorest regions of the country were receiving the least share of the revenue.

Dr. Amin Adam said some regions notwithstanding their enormous developmental challenges, were still being treated unfairly by government during the distribution and allocation of the oil money.

Nowhere in Ghana is poverty more pervasive than the three regions of the North. The average poverty level in the Upper West, Upper East and Northern Regions is 62 percent while the national average is 18 percent. But sadly, recent statistics from the Ministry of Finance show that the three regions of the north and Central Region receive meagre allocations of the oil revenue annually. 

For instance, during allocation of oil revenue to the country’s road sector between 2011 and 2013, the Northern Region got only 5 percent, Upper West 1 percent, Upper East 2 percent and Central Region 2 percent whereas the Eastern Region had 20 percent, Greater Accra 13 percent, Ashanti Region 19 percent and Western Region 15 percent. 

Dr. Amin Adam made the call at a regional stakeholder consultative forum held in Tamale to deliberate on low financing of the educational sector by government. The forum was organized by the Northern Network for Education Development (NNED) in collaboration with the ACEP with Support from IBIS-Ghana. 

The forum was under the theme: “Repositioning in Education Financing On Goods, Services and Assets Through Increased 2016 Annual Budget Financing Amount (ABFA) Findings and Disbursement for Education.” It was part of the implementation of a project that was currently being implemented by all three organisations.

The project according to NNED’s Executive Chairman Musah Alhassan Jawula sought to monitor the 2014 utilization and track disbursement levels of the 2015 allocated funds of 96,275,504 million dollars to education so as to influence the 2016 budget allocation to education.

Education Project Coordinator at IBIS-Ghana Mr. Eric Kavaarpuo also bemoaned the rapid decline of quality education in the country. He said despite the fact that the government of Ghana had exceeded the UNESCO benchmark (20 percent of governments’ expenditure) on education, the situation in the educational sector was still not good. 

According to him, the reason accounting for the decline in quality education could simply be attributed to a mismatch between resources government claimed it was pumping into education as against the results it was also making.

Dr. Amin Adam in a presentation said in 2012 and 2013, the Ministry of Education received GH¢20 million and GH¢10 million as against GH¢65 million and GH¢20 million received by the presidency. “Also in 2014, of the over GH¢5 billion of oil money allocated to the education sector, 75 percent of the amount went into wages and salaries while only 20 percent of the amount went into goods and services”, he explained.

He also revealed that 58.60 percent of funding in the education sector was from development partners with 2.80 percent from government whiles 1.20 percent from Internally Generated Funds by the educational institutions.                                                                     

                       

The Executive Director of ACEP Dr. Mohammed Amin Adam enjoined stakeholders and nongovernmental organizations in education to advocate for bigger investments towards education development in the poorest parts of the country. 

Meanwhile, participants also urged government to invest more in the basic, senior high school and technical and vocational education since results in recent times left much to be desired. 

They also advocated for the creation of an office in charge of oil revenue allocation and adopt a formula similar to the one currently being used by the Administrator of the District Assembly Common Fund to allocate funds to District Assemblies to undertake development projects of their choice.