CPP On Environment

The Convention People’s Party (CPP) says until there is a complete transformation of the society, Ghana will not make any significant progress in her quest to salvage the existing challenges of environmental degradation.
In a 5-page document policy framework, presented by Mr. Kwamena Benyarko, Shadow Minister of Environment, to the press in Accra yesterday, the party said: “The CPP will resource the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to expand its presence in every district and main cities to provide the technical know-how to support the party’s awareness drive.”
The briefing is a weekly event by the party dubbed: “How the CPP will Do IT” where the party outlines its programs and policies if given the mandate to form the next government.
Branding the EPA as Ghana’s ‘chief environment advocates’ the party insisted that the bottlenecks bedeviling the sector could only be resolved if ‘highly trained, well exposed professionals are offered the chance to man the affairs of the EPA.’
According to the CPP, the erstwhile NPP administration and current NDC government have shown ‘little enthusiasm in tackling the very serious urgent subject in the sector’, a trend the party promised to reverse.
The party says its flagship strategy in dealing with what the policy described as ‘rein in the seemingly intractable environmental challenges of the country’ will be the ‘Clean and Green initiative.’
To Mr. Benyarko, key element in rolling out the plan will involve an extensive awareness campaign to educate Ghanaians on the need to protect the environment as well as investing heavily in capacity building of professionals.
“Communities will be encouraged to form non-political, purely voluntary associations with the sole aim of protecting the environment, actively supported by a CPP government with the youth as the main movers and task masters,’ the statement noted.
The party disclosed that an award scheme for the “most beautiful and cleanest district or city in Ghana shall be institutionalized on a competitive basis” to enhance the policy.
“The last Saturday of every month will be institutionalized as a day for the cleaning up of our surroundings and neighbourhoods. Supported by businesses and interested groups, who share our concerns on the environment and resourced by government with the necessary tools,’ the statement added.
It said with the EPA providing the thinking, the support of all political parties, including civil society groups will be sought to ensure the progression of the initiative.
Page 2 of the document, elaborates on the respite the party intends to embark upon to regulate noise pollution in the country.
“Herein lays the superiority of the Nkrumaist ideology over and above the NDC’s and NPP’s. It is only through a united effort by West African States and for that matter the whole of Africa that together we can marshal the resources to protect our seas and offshore economic zones from environmental abuse and overfishing.
So the CPP’s Pan Africanism ideology, which seeks to unite of Africans, is not a historical ‘hangover’ or an emotional day trip into the past, but is a pragmatic enterprise that will have far-reaching economic, social and other benefits including the protection of the environment to all the individual countries in Africa,” the statement added.
It was in this direction that Mr. Benyarko said a CPP government will not succumb to threats of demonstration in attempting to ‘impose a semblance of order in the country.’