‘We Need Sewerage System Instead of Septic Tanks’ – Dr Yankson

Dr Steve Amoaning Yankson, the President-elect of the Ghana Institution of Engineering (GhIE), has called on the government to vigorously pursue the development of sewerage system instead of the use of septic tanks.

He said the sewerage system had been scientifically proved to be hygienic and safe as compare to septic tanks, which discharge its contents into public drains and water courses posing health threats to the citizenry.

Dr Yankson made the call at the 49th Presidential Address of the GhIE in Accra on the theme: “Engineering Effective Delivery in Sanitation.”

He said according to a UNDP Report of 2015, 64 per cent of the global population currently use improved sewerage and toilet facilities; on the contrary, Ghana was struggling to make significant progress.

Dr Yankson said Ghana is rated seventh at the bottom of a worldwide list of countries, which are unclean as a result of unhealthy environment that increase preventable communicable diseases, poor management of sanitation and worrying open defecation.

He said large areas of Ghana’s cities rely on water-borne flushing toilet into septic tanks and that it was evident that in Accra sanitation would have been better off if the sewerage system was developed.

The President-elect said records available in terms of historical facts and scientific proofs showed that the invention of the sewerage system was the most significant scientific discovery ever chalked, thereby accounting for saving millions of life threatening diseases due to its hygienic operational systems.

“This system has tremendous capacity to handle increasing population with minimal maintenance cost,” and urged the government to revert to the sewerage system due to the rapid urbanization and the cost on public health.

Dr Yankson also called on the government to take a critical look at recycling of waste materials as part of waste management to save resources spent on landfill.

He urged parliamentarians and opinion leaders to see to it that plastic waste issues was tackled at the source with the manufacturers taking the responsibility to pay for management of the plastic wastes that they generated or government must place a total ban on its manufacturing.

Mr Yaw Osafo Marfo, the Senior Minister, reminded the Metropolitan, Municipal, and District Assemblies that it was their mandate to mobilise resource to executive exercises to improve the health of the people.

He said property rate paid in Greater Accra with its huge population yields 10 million Ghana cedis and that it meant about 80 per cent of eligible payees were not paying their property rate and that was disheartening.

Mr Osafo Marfo called on the MMDAs to optimize their revenue collection to improve on the living conditions of the people.

Dr Abu Sakara Forster, the Chairman of the occasion, reminded Ghanaians that “cleanliness is next to Godliness” and therefore they should avoid creating the filth that has engulfed the country.

Source: GNA