Assemblies urged to enact laws on sand winning
Mr John Nkaw, Programme Officer of SEND-Ghana, has appealed to district assemblies to enact by-laws to regulate activities of sand winning by owners of tipper trucks so as to preserve land.
He observed that there were no by-laws to regulate sand winning, especially in the Kumbungu District where sand winning activities were destroying people’s farms.
He said the district assemblies must impose levies on owners of tipper trucks involved sand winning.
Mr Nkaw made the appeal in Tamale on Friday in a policy dialogue with stakeholders involving the Environmental Protection Agency, (EPA), Department of Social Welfare and the Ministry of Food and Agriculture as well as Tipper Truck Owners Association.
The SEND-Ghana organized the programme in collaboration with the Northern Regional Coordinating Council (RCC) to discuss the Local Government Revenue Tracking (LGRT) report.
The main purpose was to enable stakeholders to among other things discuss findings and give recommendations of the survey that was conducted in the Tarkwa/Nsuaem and Jomoro districts of the Western Region and the Tolon/Kumbungu District Assemblies in the Northern Region.
Mr Nkaw said the three districts were chosen because minerals such as gold and petroleum products were extracted at Tarkwa and Jomoro while sand was being wined in Kumbungu.
He noted that the LGRT project was meant to promote accountability in the use of local government revenue generated from oil and mining royalties, fees and taxes.
He, however, placed more emphasis on the monies generated from sand winning in the Kumbungu District and how the monies could be used for development purposes.
He said people in the district were aware of sand winning but that they had low access to information on the negative impact on the environment and advised district assemblies to take sand winning issues seriously.
He outlined measures that the Tolon/Kumbungu District was putting in place to monitor sand winning activities to include the provision of stickers for the tipper truck drivers for identity and constructing a bridge over the White Volta around the Afayili as means of streamlining their activities.
Mr Jimah Loury, Programme Officer of the EPA, indicated that licenses were not given to individuals involved in sand winning in the Northern Region unlike the Greater Accra Region, which contributed to the haphazard sand winning activities.
He, however, proposed to the NRCC that the EPA should be part of a board, which monitors activities especially on road constructions.
He expressed concern about how land was usually not reclaimed after winning.
Mr Loury appealed to the NRCC to award contracts on land related issues to the EPA so that when things went wrong, action could be taken and that individuals could also be held responsibly.
Mr Musah Iddrissu Najeeb, Chairman of Sand and Stones Association, said there was no need for stickers to be given to the tipper truck drivers since they plied different districts such as Yapei, Tolon, and Savelugu and not only Kumbungu.
He explained that tipper truck drivers could not afford to pay for different stickers before operating in the various districts and suggested the need to get a universal sticker that could allow them to operate in all districts.
Source: GNA