Tamale chief wants sanitary inspectors back

Naa Dakpema Alhassan Dawuni, Chief of Tamale, has advocated the reintroduction of the Environmental Sanitary Inspectors, popularly known as “Samasama” into the country to ensure environmental cleanliness.

He said the efforts at addressing the filth that had engulfed the country with its attendant health hazards would continue to be a fight in futility if efforts were not made to reintroduce and empower Environmental Sanitary Inspectors to deal with the culprits.

Naa Dawuni made the appeal in Tamale, on Tuesday, in a speech read on his behalf during the “SNV Northern Festival 2014”. It was jointly organized by the Netherlands Development Organisation (SNV) and the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development.

The festival was on the theme: “Ghana’s Developmental Agenda-the role of SNV” and was aimed at raising awareness on the most serious development challenges in Northern Ghana, which relates to SNV’s work in the areas of Agriculture, Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) and the renewable sectors.

Naa Dawuni said monies that the government, through the various Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies, paid to Zoomlion Ghana to clean the environment could have been set aside to empower the sanitary inspectors to do their work.

He described the government’s National Cleaning Exercise as laudable, but expressed fears that the exercise would not be sustainable.

“When the people change their attitudes, the situation would improve and the only way to change their attitudes is to take action against those flout the environmental laws,” he stressed

He commended SNV for the various interventions to help improve the living conditions of people, especially in the Northern Region, and assured that he would partner with any organization that work to transform lives.

Madam J. Childress, Country Director of SNV Ghana, said SNV would continue to pursue poverty reduction by catalyzing sustainable solutions for vulnerable segments of the population, especially in areas of Agriculture, Water, Sanitation and Hygiene, Governance and Renewable Energy.

She said SNV was promoting agriculture as a business along its value chain and the key approach was to provide smart, market-based solutions through value chain and inclusive business initiatives in selected cash and staple food commodities.

Madam Childress said SNV’s current interventions in the agriculture sector addressed food security and nutrition, sustainable markets, climate smart agriculture, gender in agriculture, as well as renewable energy.

She said SNV would continue to engage stakeholders in useful discussions as well as looking for areas of synergies and smarter development approaches to solutions.

Alhaji A.B.A Fuseini, Deputy Northern Regional Minister, condemned the habit of littering saying, “As Muslims we need to appear very clean before praying five times a day and even after just finish bathing we still need to perform ablution, which means that our creator abhors dirt. This is why as Muslims we need to keep our environments clean as we do to our bodies before prayers”.

He said the government recognized the contribution of development partners and would continue to work closely with all its development partners to facilitate development.