Deputy Minister for Tourism, Culture and Creative Arts, Dzifa Abla Gomashie has stated that she is on a personal campaign resisting and rejecting polythene bags whenever she buys something that requires packaging, and has called on all and sundry to join the campaign.
According to her, that will be the surest way of solving part of the sanitation problem in the country.
“I will not accept polythene bag from any vendor. Whenever I buy an item, if I did not carry a bag from home, then I will rather choose to collect the stuffs with my hands.
“We have to go back and start practicing the way our mothers were doing it by carrying baskets to the markets. When we start rejecting polythene bags we would start solving part of the sanitation problem,” she stressed.
The Ministry of Environment, Science and Innovation has given producers of polythene bags a timeline within which to stop producing polythene bags, and while that is yet to be enforced, the Deputy Minister says individuals can start finding solutions to the menace.
Ms Gomashie was speaking to The Finder during a clean-up exercise at one of the most widely used beach fronts, the Sakumono Titanic Beach.
Tackling the sanitation problem in this country, she said, is a collective effort and not solely government’s effort.
All households, she advised, must be aware of the end effect of throwing rubbish in the open environment and learn to segregate it and dispose it properly.
She noted that it is about time citizens recognised that their actions and inactions go to impact them negatively.
She urged the Tema Metropolitan Assembly, queen-mother of Sakumono and members of the community to consider the beach as one of their properties and ensure it is always clean.
The Deputy Minister added that “by so doing you take advantage of the beach to earn a living through tourist attraction”.
She said the duty of the ministry is to promote tourism through creative arts, and not to clean the beaches.
The clean-up exercise was an initiative by ‘Nshorena Project’ and supported by Guinness Ghana Breweries Limited (GGBL) ZOOMLION and other partners.
ZOOMLION supported the exercise with logistics and personnel, with Guinness Ghana Brewery Limited supporting by way of food and drinks, as well as personnel.
Project Nshorena was initiated by Mr Kofi Tsikata, a communication specialist working with the World Bank, who now wants to make it a national crusade.
The project aims at galvanising support to fight the worsening environmental conditions along Ghana’s coastlines, despite the huge tourism potential that Ghana has.
Ghana has about 600km coastline, but a large tract of it is now a receptacle for garbage, faecal matter and other waste materials. That aside, the coconut trees which adorned the shores have all disappeared, and in their stead are concrete and wooden structures and pig sites.
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