As Ghana joins the rest of the world to celebrate World Environment Day today, the NshoreNa Project, a campaign for cleaner beaches in the country, has warned that insanitary conditions along the Korle Gonno shoreline in Accra, can cripple tourism in the area.
It attributed the unhygienic conditions at the Korle Gonno Beach to the discharge of sewage into the sea from the Korle Lagoon, the pile up of tonnes of plastic garbage rejected by the sea and the discharge of raw human excreta into the sea.
NshoreNa Project
Carved out of the Ga name for beach, ‘nshor’, but with the ‘e’ at the end of ‘shore’ in English, the NshoreNa Project aims at galvanising the support of the public to fight worsening environmental conditions along the country’s coastline.
The campaigners have since visited beaches, including the James Town Beach in Central Accra, the Lavender Hill at Korle Gonno, Nungua, La, Sakumono, all in Accra, Tema and Srogbe, near Anloga, in the Volta Region.
The Korle Gonno Beach is seen by environmental experts as one of the environmental nightmares of the country. It is not far from the Korle Lagoon, which is also filled with pollutants from Agbogbloshie and Sodom and Gomora.
That aside, tonnes of plastic garbage from the manufacturing companies rejected by the sea have piled up at the beach.
The situation is worsened by the nauseating stench that fills the air as a result of the discharge of human excreta into the sea from the Lavender Hill.
AMA
The Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA) has, since 2010, been saying it will close down the Lavender Hill.
However, last year, it said six anaerobic digesters at the new scientific liquid waste facility intended to treat waste into organic material and bio fuel could not process the 120 trucks of liquid waste generated in a day.
The facility could handle 60 trucks and the rest had to be dumped at the Lavender Hill, making it difficult for the city authorities to completely shut down the dumping site.
Korle Gonno Beach
Heaps of rubbish are fast consuming the once beautiful Korle Gonno Beach that used to be a place for revellers.
Some fishermen believe that the garbage that got trapped in their fishing nets was part of the overflow of refuse from the Korle Lagoon.
Ghana has about 600km of coastline, portions of which are filled with waste materials rejected by the sea.
Solution
Mr Kafu Kofi Tsikata, the lead campaigner for the NshoreNa project, said, “Something has to be done, and soonest, about this mess.”
He called for laws to be enacted and enforced to stop and avert coastal pollution, noting that there were no laws to deal specifically with the situation.
“Let’s act now and turn the Korle Gonno Beach into an attractive destination for local and foreign tourists,” he added.
