University of Cape Coast Associate Professor Kofi Amegah, an expert in Environmental and Nutritional Epidemiology, has suggested that the government allocate the funds generated from the emission tax to support environmental protection agencies.
He explained that due to inadequate resources, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is unable to effectively monitor pollution levels and promote environmental best practices.
Speaking on The Pulse on JoyNews on February 1, he said “Government should ensure that at least a proportion of that money can be used to resource the EPA. They are in distress; they don’t have the resources to monitor air quality, they don’t have the resources to monitor water quality, and others.
“So the government every year is going to attempt to buy some reference-based monitors to install in Accra, Kumasi, and other Urban areas then of course we are going to get data to inform air pollution control policies.”
He explained that globally air pollution accounts for a lot of deaths. However, in Ghana since we lacked data we could not draw a correlation to the deaths.
“We are going get data to inform air pollution control policies. We are going to get data to inform climate action plans. Importantly, we the researchers who sit in the universities are also going to get exposure data combined with some health data and be able to generate health effect studies and show to the government, and the policymakers that indeed air pollution is killing X amount of people,” he added.
Meanwhile, although Professor Amegah is hopeful that these funds will be put to good use, he stated that the government’s posture towards the emission tax indicates that it is just another source of revenue generation.
“Government can show that these monies that we are collecting, these levies that we are collecting we are going to use it to do A, B, C, D. But in all honesty, possibly I also see it as another revenue stream which for me is unfortunate. We should not see this as a revenue stream.
“That means you are taking advantage of drivers to collect another money,” he bemoaned. Meanwhile, you are not to use the money to mitigate climate change, you are not going to use the money to improve air quality. Excuse my language, we are been short-changed,” he said.
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