Strategic policy initiatives needed to achieve MDGs – Lecturer
Mr Apori Ntiforo, a Lecturer at the Faculty of Applied Sciences of the University of Development Studies, at the weekend stated that the Millennium Development Goals targeted at ensuring environmental sustainability could be achieved through strategic integrated management policy initiatives.
He said one pertinent issue was that the implementations of plans, programmes and projects with the aim of achieving the MDG were interrelated, interconnected and re-enforcing.
He said the reduction in these MDG targets indirectly affects the others and that what was central to all was MDG 7 which states that by the end of 2015, the 191 UN member states or world leaders were to reduce to halve the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation.
Mr Ntiforo said this during a community sanitation durbar held by Zoomlion Ghana Limited to sensitize members of the community on the need to practice proper waste management and environmental sanitation.
“The achievement of MDG 7 through activities or behavioral changes aimed at maintaining and improving the standard of basic environmental conditions affecting the welfare of mankind would invariably reduce poverty, hunger, disease, illiteracy, environmental degradation and discrimination against women” he explained.
He said safe water, sanitation and hygiene remained one of the world’s most urgent issues and said the burden of diseases due to water, sanitation and hygiene could be prevented through increased access to safe water and better hygiene.
The economic benefit of better hygiene, he added, demanded the integration of water, sanitation and hygiene in disease reduction strategies of the country.
He commended Zoomlion Ghana Limited for championing crusades on waste management challenges confronting the country, adding that the company had played integral roles in proffering practical solutions to these myriad of challenges through innovative technologies.
Source: GNA