The Environmental Services Providers Association (ESPA), has called on government to settle arrears owed them to enable them work to prevent the risk of a cholera outbreak this year.<\/p>\n
Executive Secretary of the Association, Ama Ofori Antwi, told Bernard Avle on the Citi Breakfast Show<\/strong>, that if government fails to pay the arrears, the group\u2019s members will be forced to shut down their landfill sites.<\/p>\n [contextly_sidebar id=”NqpVRIHESDQMHeLOukoutvJGV0PV1vKr”]\u201cI know workers at Kumasi landfill sites have not been paid for almost three years. When I talk about these landfill sites, I talk about engineered and daily operations which can cost over 30, 000 cedis. Last year, we got government to pay some money, but we still have some outstanding arrears. As the rains are setting in, if government does not come in quickly to support, we might experience what happened with cholera when we shut down landfill sites two years ago,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Ama Ofori Antwi added\u00a0that it will be \u201cprudent for government to engage with us. Before the budget was read last year, I pleaded with the Ministry of Finance to allocate funds to our sector but nothing was done.\u00a0Meanwhile when the June 3 disaster happened, government gave so much for the intervention. We realized that government pays more attention to the curative than the preventive measures.\u201d<\/p>\n Cholera kills hundreds\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Ghana in 2014 recorded 28,975 cholera cases with 243 deaths, of which majority of the cases were recorded in the Greater Accra Region.<\/p>\n The number\u00a0reduced to 692 in 2015 with 15 deaths.\u00a0Many attributed the outbreak\u00a0to poor sanitation.\u00a0The situation compelled government to introduce the National Sanitation Day.<\/p>\n –<\/p>\n By: Jeffrey Owuraku Sarpong\/citifmonline.com\/Ghana<\/p>\n