There is a similar rift between Nigerian writers in the country and those outside it or returning. About what things we can talk about and whether our criticisms are legitimate and constructive or just complaints from people who haven’t really seen Nigerian (and aren’t Nigerian enough to complain).

Like most arguments, there are two extremes.
There are people, perhaps the arch bishop is one of them, who do not want to hear a lick of bad news about the country. Stop complaining, they say, Nigeria is improving. You had no power for one week. What about us we had no power for months?
Well, yes it is improving. But it isn’t improving because people said nothing and pretended to be happy.

And on the other extreme are the people who have made a career out of whining about wherever they are. Often these aren’t the hardest hit people, and they aren’t crying out for the rights of a marginalised group. They punch out their rants in relative comfort while paying bribes to bypass what little order we have.
When they clash, both groups cancel themselves out, creating bright sparks that don’t translate into any progress.

I’m sure there is a happy medium. Not one I know, but to those determined to paint others as outsiders, I say, no one has a monopoly on suffering and its definition. And to the complainers, if you took a break from your whining, you might find much to like, there are people doing good work here.

Having said that, environmental sanitation is a joke.
It is the culmination of everything that is wrong here. That there has to be a law restricting us to our homes once a month or else we won’t clean up is the peak of irresponsibility.

It is the equivalent of telling your child he can’t leave his room until he tidies up, but to an entire country of 150 million, many of them adults.

Can we seriously start a campaign to regulate the quality of the so-called ‘second-hand’ clothes’ that come into this country? Why regulate? Well, as you all know, we don’t make our own clothes. By that, I’m not talking about African ‘wax print’ or GTP fabrics we use to make our traditional attires. I mean, the everyday socks, handkerchiefs, scarfs, gym clothes, t-shirts, denim pants etc… We don’t make these, so I can’t even advocate on a total ban just yet. Like some friends of mine would say, better 2nd-hand than some inferior looking brand new ones imported from China. Oops!

I have a problem with 2nd hand clothes. Although they are ‘rubbish’ to someone else, when we bring them to our country, they become trash much earlier in their ‘second lives’. They easily  turn into rubbish! And since we best know how not to manage our waste, it is important that we regulate how much ‘waste’ we import.

Is there a way to determine the 2nd life cycle of used clothing? This is really getting out of hand. I visited Kantamanto some days back and, right at the entrance/exit of the 2nd-hand market was this pile of rubbish. Clothes upon clothes…

It’s quite appalling tbh.

hahaha! someone’s actually sitting right at the edge and selling vegetables.

I’ve been in Ghana all month and one of the first things I heard when I arrived was an outbreak of cholera. C-H-O-L-E-R-A! I exclaimed. In this 2012, we are still having outbreaks of this disease? Really? I was stunned initially, then, I remembered tweeting this report about how much Ghana is loosing from poor sanitation each year. That was about USD 420 million. This is the link

I thought to myself, we’re sitting on a ‘gold mine’ of rubbish and this is just one of the benefits. Accra is too dirty. We are too dirty. When you enter certain municipalities or neighbourhoods (Madina, Tema Station), there is this stench that welcomes and makes you go numb for some minutes. I don’t know how the street hawkers, ‘kayaaye women’ bathe, eat and work in such areas. Come to think of it, there are offices close by. During my high school days, I always wondered where that powerful stench used to come from around the Korle Gonno neighbourhood.

As a nation, we do not manufacture (I stand to be corrected). Majority of what we consume, we do not produce. We do not recycle and reuse. We just consume, and dispose (improperly mostly). What hurts the most is the 2nd-hand goods we import. This I think has the greatest market share of certain products like, clothes, vehicles, home appliances and so on. Since we import a vast majority of used goods, their lifeline or cycle doesn’t last long, therefore, in a short period of time, they become waste.

I remember in 2010, one of my flat mates asked if i read this article,”

Ghana bans second-hand knickers (and an interesting audio from the users). Although I was embarrassed, I had to make him know it is no fault of theirs that they use these things. To be honest, it is just the privileged few who use brand new products. The greater chunk of these goods which cannot be ‘consumed’ are thrown away ( adding more waste).

This waste issue is a huge problem.

Landfill sites. How do we manage them? Dig and dump! (until it becomes a mountain)

We can’t just ban importation of already used goods (or even new ones) because, we do not make the types of clothes we need. However, is there a way to regulate the quality of some of these products so that we can prevent them from entering the country?

How responsible are these water sachet producing companies, in terms of environmental sanitation?

Water.

Since early April till today (how long I’ve been in Ghana so far),I’ve not seen a drop of water from our taps. Can you guess from where and how we get water? It’s without doubt that, Ghana Water Company will bring their bill, by next week. My mom bought water and the colour is brown, it doesn’t lather and we don’t know the source of the water. However, for certain household chores, we can make do. More money for sachet water producers….The whole neighbourhood has no water and this includes the wakye seller, the hausa kooko seller, the kenkey seller and all those ‘perching in uncompleted houses. We can afford to get the best drinking water whiles we use that hard water for other domestic purposes but, for those who cannot, do we now get an idea where they might be getting cholera from?

I’ll be back to finish this post…

Ghana is suffering from serious environmental sanitation which has plagued the country.

Solid waste disposal in Ghana is a grave cause of concern and the chief areas of problems are indiscriminate dumping, lack of fitting disposal sites, troubles with proper solid waste disposal due to deterioration of road ways and escalating traffic woes. There is also no substitute for transportation.

The escalating problem on solid waste management is due to various factors. Problems such as rapid urbanization, financial incompetence of local authorities lack of proper planning and management equipments for solid waste disposal have together escalated the already grave problem of solid waste disposal. Need of the hour is to execute proper disposal and management system.

 AKOBEN Mining Sector Rating for 2010

AKOBEN program is an environmental performance rating and disclosure initiative of theEnvironmental Protection Agency (EPA), Government of Ghana. Under the AKOBEN initiative, the environmental performance of mining and manufacturing operations is assessed using a five-color rating scheme.

For full details of the report and on other sectors, visit http://www.epaghanaakoben.org/

(c) http://www.epaghanaakoben.org/

(…)  The DOH is calling on local communities to actively participate in environmental sanitation activities like clean up drives.

Read all Sun Star

The conference is organized around four main themes:

• Water Resources
• Water Supply
• Environmental Sanitation
• Institutional and Management Issues

Lasting five days and hosted by Ghana’s Ministry of Water Resources, Works and Housing, the conference will attract around 500 delegates from across the world. More than 120 papers and posters will be presented during the event, which will also feature informal discussion groups, debates and workshops.

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