Editorial: Regulate location of gas stations in residential areas
Ghana’s economy is expanding on all frontiers, confirming its status as a middle-income country.
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Mass consumption is commonly associated with emerging economies across the globe, bringing in its trail challenges that require controls and regulations to ensure that standards are maintained to safeguard the safety of consumers and customers.
Although everybody expects improvement in his or her standards of living, the resources of the state are always overstretched in the efforts of the government to provide for the needs of the people.
Growing population and urbanisation have put officials of state institutions at their wits’ end in trying to devise strategies to put goods and services at the disposal of the people.
Perhaps it is the realisation that the state alone cannot provide for the needs of the people that the private sector is being encouraged to complement the efforts of the state to improve the economic landscape.
About two decades ago, Accra, our national capital, was a small city that was better managed by its managers.
Today, Accra has grown beyond the metropolis to cover other parts of the Greater Accra Region and even towards nearby regions, for which reason all the social services are under stress from the millions of residents, as well as visitors to the city.
The phenomenal growth of Accra and other urban centres has put premium on property and land. The value of land and property has skyrocketed and it has become next to impossible to acquire land at any location considered a prime area in Accra.
Notwithstanding the assault on illegal structures by the statutory authorities, people who have ‘connections’ still defy the authorities and do things to satisfy their egos.
The chilling challenge confronting the country is the siting of gas and other fuel stations in heavily populated residential areas, in spite of the high fatalities associated with gas use and anything inflammable.
The Director of the Reconstructive Plastic Surgery and Burns Centre (RPSC), Korle Bu Teaching Hospital, Dr Opoku Ware Ampomah, has said, “the siting of these gas filling stations in highly populated areas is a disaster waiting to happen”.
He said this at the National Petroleum Authority (NPA) Consumer Week celebration in Accra yesterday.
If the disaster that is waiting to happen ever comes to pass, we shall lay the blame squarely at the doorstep of the NPA and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
These are the two regulatory bodies that have the mandate to sanction or deny the siting of any petroleum product facility at unauthorised places.
The Daily Graphic is aware of the turf war between the NPA and the EPA when it comes to the siting of these facilities.
These two organisations were established by the government to offer services for the good of the people, and that being the case, the two can only work to promote our welfare.
It is imperative that they do so in this regard because of the high risk associated with the misuse of gas.
The Daily Graphic, therefore, calls on the NPA and the EPA to carry out further sensitisation on the siting of gas and other fuel stations in residential areas and also increase public knowledge on safety regulations regarding the use of petroleum products.