An officer at the Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA) has lamented how the environmental health and sanitation sector is neglected and its officers underpaid in Ghana.

Mrs Florence Kuukyi, the Public Health Director, AMA, spoke to Taller Dee on Journey to Heaven on No.1 FM, 105.3.

“Environmental health officers are the most neglected warriors in the system. Meanwhile, if they are not there, a lot of things will go on because we are prevention officers,” she said.

“Any government that gives adequate attention to preventive officers advances rapid development.

“Environmental officers are key – the backbone – for development all across the globe. It’s only on our side [of the world] that environmental officers are silent.”

Government

Mrs Kuukyi grieved, “As we talk, we don’t even have a ministry.

“There’s a serious structural gap that needs to be worked on in the environmental health sector.”

“And if the government wants to progress, they should take environmental health and sanitation as a priority and they are going to excel,” she advised President John Mahama and his National Democratic Congress (NDC) government.

Tourism

“If the country is not clean, there’s noise, and people cannot breathe comfortably – it would even reduce the number of tourists in the country. And when tourists reduce, it’ll reduce the economic gains in the country,” she admonished.

“So the development of every country starts from the environmental health and sanitation sector.”