NCCE marks Citizenship Week

The National Commission for Civic Education (NCCE) has organised an environmental campaign on the theme;” A Clean Ghana, Our Responsibility” for school pupils to mark this year's citizenship week across the country.

One of such campaign was held for pupils of the President JEA Mills Basic School in Mamprobi, Accra, to create the awareness on the need for everyone to get involved in making Ghana clean and green.

Mr Francis Ameyibor, the Deputy News Editor and Executive Director of Communication Development for Advocacy (CDA) Consult in a presentation on how to keep the environment neat, said citizens have a role to play in controlling and keeping the environment clean, green and healthy by avoiding indiscriminate littering and properly disposing off their waste.

He urged the children to serve as NCCE Civic Environmental Police to educate people in their communities to keep the environment clean to protect them from communicable diseases.

Mr Ameyibor also spoke about waste segregation and recycling, adding that items such as waste glass, paper and plastic should be recycled whiles unwanted items such as toys and clothing that could be reused should be sent to second hand stores to be resold or give away.

He noted that proper waste management and disposal would reduce bacterial infectious diseases such as cholera, malaria, typhoid, respiratory allergies, adding that, garbage pollution is the main cause of these diseases.

"Avoid throwing away trash or waste materials almost everywhere. Any pollution can negatively affect you and your family’s health while destroying the entire environment," he said.

According to him the only solution to end garbage pollution was change of mentality and to bring to everyone’s attention the need to protect the environment and health through concrete and urgent action.

He said citizens have direct control and influence over the environment so they could protect it or reduce pollution by serving as watchdogs to others in public places and they should keep all the waste they do and bin it at home.

He advised that plastics, glass, paper and other materials should be sorted out in different bins in order to make waste management and recycling easy.

Madam Gladys Osman, Deputy Director in charge of Programme, NCCE advised the pupils to form a small company to be picking plastic wastes in their communities and sell it to generate fund to support the Civic club's activities such as excursions and educational campaigns.

Mr Franklin Noble Fenuku, the Headmaster of the School, thanked the NCCE officials for choosing the school for the programme and urged them to come again to educate the other stream of pupils next time to help achieve the goal.