Mr Kwesi Enyan, the Board
Chairman of the EPA, inaugurated the two committees, namely, the Pesticides
Technical Committee (PTC) and the Hazardous Chemicals Committee (HCC) of the
EPA on Monday in Accra.
The two committees, with a
four-year mandate, were inaugurated to fulfil the tenet of the EPA Act of 1994
(Act 490).
The Hazardous Chemicals Committee
has Mr Peter Abum Sarkodie, Executive Director of EPA as its Chairman with 12
other representatives from various regulatory, agencies and environmental
institutions as members.
The Pesticides Technical
Committee on the other hand, has Mr Mustapha Kumah of the Ghana Standards
Authority as the Chairman, with the other 12 member from the Ministries,
Departments, and Agencies (MDAs) and other private entities.
The Committees were expected to
manage the use of chemicals throughout its life cycle-from production or
formulation, through use, transport and to the disposal or recycling.
Dr Sam Adu-Kumi, Director
Pesticides/ Chemical and Registrar of Pesticides, EPA, who spoke to the GNA
after the inauguration, said chemicals, could be really dangerous for human
health and the environment if they were not properly used “but if they are
properly managed or controlled, we need them in all sectors of society.
“That is why Ghana like all other
countries of the world needs such management and control programmes in place to
ensure the safety of use by humans,” he noted.
He said by the EPA Act, the two
committees were mandated to ensure leadership in bringing the stakeholders
together, through the EPA as a lead institution, and to make sure that the
chemicals that were imported, manufactured and used, were according to
standards or best practices.
“They will ensure that we don’t
do anything that will really harm humans and the environment. So the committees
have a huge task to ensure that the EPA and the collaborators are really
enforcing the necessary laws and regulations in place to ensure safety for
humans and environment”, Dr Adu-Kumi, said.
Mr Enyan said he inaugurated the
Committees so that they would work together with the Board to ensure a safer
environment.
He said the EPA was currently
licensing chemicals and monitoring the life cycle of the chemicals.
He, however, noted that the
Agency was also handicapped in terms of resources and the Board was working at
resourcing the EPA to manage the environment especially the lifecycle of
chemicals.
“And if you look at the
composition of the committees, they are made up of lots of institutions that
have something to do with chemicals, their use or their functions, so it is
good that there must be collaborations between members of the committee so we
can actually achieve the objective we want to achieve.
“So even if we don’t have the
people we can collaborate with the agencies that are already working on the
field like the Crop Research, the Cocoa Board extension officers, who would
check the output of the pesticides and whether they are being used rightly or
not”, Mr Enyan explained.
Mr Sakordie, on his part noted
that, the EPA Management was in serious talks with the Board to see how best
the Agency could be relieved of their 34 per cent subvention fee that was given
to government annually, so the Agency could have a full 100 per cent of their
internally generated fund to run the many activities and programmes of the EPA.
Meanwhile, the HCC is tasked to
monitor the use of hazardous chemicals by collecting information on the
importation, exportation, manufacture, distribution, sale, use and disposal of
those chemicals and to advise the Board and the Management on the regulation
and management of hazardous chemicals.
The PTC would examine and
recommend regulations for the registration of pesticides and licensing of
pesticides dealers, as well as evaluate and make recommendations for the
registrations of pesticides products towards the sustenance of the pesticides
control and management scheme.
GNA
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