X'tian Council Chairman Cautions Believers

REVEREND DR. Paul Kofi Fynn, Chairman of the Inter Faith Management Initiative has asked believers of all faiths to stop attributing the numerous deaths in their respective communities to weird spiritual believes.

He could not fathom why believers would sit in laxity for massive filths to engulf them and yet attribute deaths in their localities to what is known in local parlance as 'juju'.

At a well-patronised clean-up exercise at Nima over the weekend, he tasked religious leaders and their followers to start cleaning their areas of worship, work and residences to avoid the outbreak of communicable diseases.

This he said was because the various religious books including the Bible and the Koran gravely frown against dirt and filth.

Dr. Fynn, who is also the Chairman of the Christian Council of Ghana, backed his claim with a Bible quotation, which expounds cleanliness as being next to Godliness.

The exercise saw the various religious groups including Christians, Moslems and other sects cleaning gutters and sweeping the streets and surroundings of Nima.

Some spirited residents joined the group in exercise, which brought together several religious leaders and groups.

According to the organisers, the programme was organised to compliments efforts being stepped up by Dr. Charles Wereko-Brobbey's Ghana at 50 Committee, which is bent on ridding the country of the increasing levels of filth before the celebration somewhere next year.

As early as 5:30am, members of the Inter Faith Waste Management Initiative and some residents had converged to start the exercise.

Nima was chosen for the exercise because it is a densely populated area with its attendant sanitary challenges.

The choice was also to stress a point that the urban poor in the area were not left out.

For now, the Chairman for the Initiative says it would work in concert with the Ghana at 50 Secretariat to put the country in a better shape since the country was loosing its innocent citizens to increasing levels of filth.

On his part, Mohammed Alfa of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Movement said the volunteers were using religion as a platform to galvanise efforts to compliment the work of the Metropolitan, Districts and Assemblies and all other agencies which were already engaged in fight of ridding the country of filth.

He emphasised that it would use education, advocacy and strategic intervention such as regular clean-ups to achieve its aims.

Kofi Tsikata of the World Bank office in Ghana said his outfit has already sunk ¢100million into waste management, yet he said it has made no significant impacts as people appear not to be changing their attitudes.

He called for intensified education and appealed to Ghanaians to do their best to make the country a clean one to attract more tourists.

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The World Bank is now collaborating with the religious groups, which wield enormous influence on the people to help solve the unending waste problem that have bedevilled the country.

The volunteers came from the Christian Council of Ghana, The National Catholic Secretariat, Al-Suna, Ahmadiyya, Ghana Pentecostal Council, National Council of Charismatic Churches, Concerned Health Groups and Arakan Barracks, whiles the Accra Metropolitan Assembly provided tipper trucks and other logistics for the moving of filth.

The Initiative expressed its appreciated the efforts of all individuals and corporate institutions that participated in the exercise and made it a success.