By
Edward Williams, GNA
Hohoe (V/R), Feb.
29, GNA – The Church of Pentecost, Hohoe Area has organised an
“Environmental Care” campaign to sensitize the citizenry on good
sanitation and hygienic practices.
The campaign, which
involved religious bodies, corporate organizations and individual groups of
professionals was aimed at intensifying education as well as creating awareness
and sensitizing the citizenry through clean-up exercises and community durbars.
Apostle Yaw
Adjei-Kwarteng, Area Head of the Church of Pentecost, Hohoe, during the durbar
said: “People become irresponsible when it comes to handling of creation
through activities such as indiscriminate felling of trees, bush burning and
littering, which gradually affect the environment”.
The Area Head said
the Church would engage government to ensure that culverts in the future were
covered.
He said the Church’s
expectation on the “Environmental Care” Campaign was that all other religious
bodies, stakeholders and teachers would “buy the vision” of ensuring a clean
environment and added that young children must also be engaged in the campaign
to enable them exhibit hygienic practices.
The “Environmental
Care” Campaign, a five year sanitation plan by the Church, saw representatives
from the Ghana Health Service, clergy, security agencies, stakeholders in the
education sector and Zoomlion with messages of support and education to the
public on the campaign.
Mr. Emmanuel Yawlui,
the Hohoe Municipal Environmental Health Officer who represented Mr. Andrews
Teddy Ofori, the Municipal Chief Executive (MCE) said human life and existence
on earth depended on the environment, which called for proper care.
He said insanitary
behaviours such as open defecation, littering, channelling waste liquids into
culverts as well as building on water ways did not destroyed the environment,
hence, making if unsafe for living.
Mr. Yawlui
complained of the attitudes of some residents who continued to litter though
the Assembly had made efforts to place dustbins at vantage points with the
excuse that the bins were too far from their homes and called for attitudinal
change to that effect.
The Health Officer
urged residents to own dustbins to ensure clean environment as well as own
toilet facilities in their homes to tackle the country’s agenda of achieving
open defecation free society.
“Every house must
have a latrine because the problem we have in Ghana is open defecation with
people defecating everywhere, so the Assembly is telling us all especially
landlords to make it a point to have toilets facilities in your homes,” Mr
Yawli said.
GNA