DUMPING OF REFUSE RESUMES ALONG BEACHES (PAGE 29)

STORY: Moses Dotsey Aklorbortu, Takoradi

Prior to the Ghana 2008 football tournament, dumping of human waste in one of the communities close to the venue of the tournament became an issue and the Sekondi-Takoradi Metropolitan Assembly promised to relocate the site to a more acceptable place to avert embarrassment.
The authorities managed to do just that for sometime, but at the moment dumping of human waste at parts of the beaches of Essipon and Enyensia has resumed in earnest.
The drivers of sewerage tankers, mainly from private waste management companies, the police and the prisons services, continue to use these places as dumping sites. The dumping produces a very bad stench that greets any visitor who enters the Sekondi/Takoradi metropolis through Essipon.
Aside that, it also sends this bad odour to the Essipon and Enyensia communities, depending on the direction of the wind on the day of dumping. The residents have complained many times but nothing has been done to stop the dumping.
Due to the existence of the Bosomtwe Sam Fishing Harbour and the home port of the Western Naval Command in Sekondi, the shores of Enyensia and Essipon are relatively calm and so in the afternoons, children from the Enyensia community go to swim in the portion of the sea there.
And depending on the direction of the tide during the dumping of the waste, it is carried together with some particles to where these children swim.
The artisanal fishermen along the shore say they would not complain any longer because nothing had been done about their previous numerous complaints.
“We hope and pray that one day it would be moved from there to make us free from the air pollution,” they said.
Also, some people in the Enyensia community, especially children, ignore the place of convenience in their community and still defecate at the beach.
Asked why they prefer the beach to the toilet, some say they love the “free range” where they enjoy the sea breeze while they respond to the call of nature and this practice could be said to be a mark of communities along the coast.
When the Assembly was contacted as to why they could not stop the dumping of sewage in the Essipon and Enyensia communities months after the tournament, it said a site acquired about 10 years ago at Essipon for the dumping of sewage had unfortunately been resold to some residents.
According to the Public Affairs Directorate of the Assembly, the problem would soon be solved when the Waste Management project site at Sofokrom was completed.