The Clean Air Fund, a global philanthropic foundation tackling air pollution, has called for the development of a medium to long-term national clean air policy to help address the issue of air pollution in the country.According to the Country Lead of Clean Air Fund, Mr Desmond Appiah, said although there had been various initiatives to help address air pollution, the lack of a national policy made it difficult for the country to address the issue holistically.Mr Appiah made the call in an interview with The Ghanaian Times during the media launch of its clean air awareness campaign activation held in Accra on Wednesday.Dubbed 'Use Your Voice to Stop Air Pollution', the purpose of the campaign is to empower individuals to be advocates of air pollution by reporting any air pollution related issue through a provided WhatsApp platform to be channelled to the appropriate institutions.Mr Appiah explained that Ghana, over the years, had been able to promote good standards in the West African sub-region with regard to the improvement of air quality through the ban on the use of lead in fuels as well as the investment in air quality monitoring systems.However, he said that despite the investment in monitoring systems and promotion of good standards by the government, the air quality of the country had not seen significant improvement.The lack of improvement in the country's air quality, Mr Appiah said, was as a result of old vehicles that plied the roads as well as their poor maintenance regime and the burning of waste.This, he said, called for the development of a national medium to long-term clean air policy by the government to help improve the country's air quality and address the issue of air pollution and its related diseases.He also underscored the need for the government to be systematic in implementing certain policies such as the policy on emission testing of vehicles."In the medium term, emission test should become mandatory.
Although the EPA has standards and the DVLA has centres for emission testing, such testing is not mandatory.
But there are so many places that if your vehicle does not meet that test, you cannot move it," Mr Appiah said."The challenge here is that whenever you are pushing for a policy, you must be realistic.
If it became mandatory, a lot of our vehicles will go off the road because they will not be qualified.
