Tema, July 17, GNA- Sixty percent of sewer covers in the Tema Metropolis have been stolen, their irons extracted and sold as scraps posing health and environmental hazards to residents. The activities of the unpatriotic citizens have left the drains and manholes with depth ranging from five to 20 feet exposed, thus creating death traps in the metropolis.
Mr Mahamadu Abdulai, Head of the Waste Management Department of the Tema Metropolitan Assembly (TMA) disclosed this to the Ghana News Agency in an interview on Thursday, saying, the theft of the covers could lead to an outbreak of communicable diseases in the metropolis. He said children especially were vulnerable, as they normally pick their footballs, dolls and other objects that they play with from the open sewer, and therefore transferred the germs onto their bodies leading to the outbreak of cholera, diarrhea and other diseases. Mr Abdulai observed that stealing of the sewer slaps have increased due to the activities of scrap dealers, who added the iron to other metals collected to give weight to their goods when selling to the steel companies.
The Waste Management Head indicated that, while sewers constructed below the ground level often get blocked when their covers were removed causing an overflow whenever it rained, it also caused siltation in manholes leading to spillage of human waste. He therefore appealed to residents of Tema to be extra vigilant and assist the TMA to apprehend the culprits for prosecution, noting that the replacement of stolen sewer covers cost the Assembly thousands of Ghana cedis. Mr Abdulai warned scrap dealers to exhibit patriotism in their work by desisting from buying irons and other metals obtained from sewer covers. Some victims of the stolen sewer covers have replaced them with wood but this is not as durable as the metals since they could cave in at any time.
