‘Lets address problems of unplanned settlements’

Daily Graphic Pg 20, Thurs. March 26/09

Story Rebecca Quaicoe-Duho

THE Minister of Environment, Science and Technology, Ms Sherry Ayittey, has called for effective strategies to address the problems associated with unplanned settlements.
She noted that such unplanned settlements resulted in the creation of slums, poor housing conditions, congestion, air and water pollution, unsanitary living conditions and other related problems.
Launching the National Population Council (NPC) Fact Sheet Five on Population and Development in Accra, she noted that the major challenges posed by rapid urbanisation, particularly the growth of large cities, with its attendant problems of slums, unemployment, poor sanitation and crime, might threaten the aspirations of the country to reach a middle-income status by 2020.
According to fact sheet, projections by the NPC reveal that the country’s urban population will hit 51.5 per cent next year, a situation which will make the country an urbanised one.
The last population census in 2000 indicated that the urban population of the country was 43.8 per cent and that was further projected to hit 62.9 per cent by 2025.
Mrs Ayitey said even though urbanisation provided opportunities for poverty reduction and sustainable development, there was the need for serious considerations to be committed to proposals made in fact sheet five in order to fashion out effective strategies to address critical socio-economic and development issues that arose with urbanisation.
The minister bemoaned the fact that 42 per cent of households in the urban centres obtained water from unprotected sources such as wells, with 16 per cent from boreholes, while 25 per cent of the population also dumped their solid waste indiscriminately, with another 58 per cent using public dumping facilities or resorting to burning and burying of their waste at their backyards.
She said 95 per cent of the country’s total population also disposed of their liquid waste at unaproved places.
The Government Statistician, Dr Grace Bediako, who chaired the programme, said there was the need for the country to document both the positive and negative sides of urbanisation to know the cost benefit.
She also called for more collaboration between the NPC and the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) so that the two could come up with periodic data to inform policy decisions.
The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) Country Representative, Mr Makane Kane, in an address, said his outfit, which has been working with the NPC since 1994, was mostly concerned about how the fact sheets would be put to use.
The Executive Director of the NPC, Mrs Esther Apewokin, said a forum on population issues that would tackle urbanisation and development, as well as other critical issues concerning urbanisation, was to be organised later in the year.
The Deputy Director of the NPC, Mr Steve Grey, who presented highlights of the fact sheet, mentioned some of the causes of urbanisation as natural increase and migration, especially from rural to urban centres due to lack of quality education, job opportunities, lack of social amenities, poor infrastructure development, among others.