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Pollution Affecting Fishermen’s Livelihoods in Ghana

Published 04/07/2011 by Global Communities

Pollution Affecting Fishermen’s Livelihoods in Ghana
By Nathan Gadugah
This article originally appeared onĀ www.modernghana.com
PHOTO: Fishermen sorting trash from their day’s catch. CHF’s SCALE-UP Program is working to promote effective waste management in Ga Mashie.
On a daily basis, choked gutters in Alajo, Nima, Odawna and several others in Accra become tributaries to the Korle Lagoon which also passes the garbage of the society, including human and plastic waste, into the belly of the sea.
The sea then becomes the reservoir not only for the fish that human beings so eagerly feed on, but the storehouse of the garbage citizens gleefully dispose off.
The end result is that we feed the sea with garbage and eat the fish from the sea with our cabbage.
On their return the nets were laden with garbage but with little fish. Here, they sort out the fish from the garbage which eventually will end in the soups and stews on our dining tables.
But what is done to the rubbish after the fish is sorted?
Gabriel Nii Teiko Tagoe, a Development Planner with the Accra Metropolitan Assembly tells Myjoyonline.com the rubbish in most cases is left and swept back into the belly of the sea.
On some occasions the beach cleaning group formed by the Zoomlion waste management clears the rubbish, he added.
He was speaking on the sidelines of the final day of the Ghana Urban Platform IV aimed at finding innovative solutions to the challenges of urbanization.
The platform put together by the Institute of Local Government Studies, in collaboration with CHF International, brought stakeholders from public, private and civil society groups to think through the crisis brought about as a result of urbanization and provide workable solutions to them.