BOLGATANGA DESERVES MODERN MEAT SHOP (D/G Monday, September 29, 2008 PAGE 40)

“Safe water supply and adequate sanitation to protect health are among the basic human rights. Ensuring their availability would contribute immeasurably to health and productivity for development.”— Dr Gro Harlem Bruntland, Director General of WHO.

THE safety of meat on the Ghanaian market, especially those slaughtered locally, has been a source of concern over the years.
A couple of weeks back, I made an infrequent visit to the Bolgatanga slaughter house, along the Bolgatanga–Bawku main road, not to purchase meat but to observe how things were done there.
Shocking would be the best word to describe the scene that greeted my eyes. Butchers slaughtering animals on the bare ground and burning off the fur in bellowing smoke was an unsightly scene.
Apart from the eyesore it creates in the municipality, this way of preparing meat for human consumption, to me, is unhygienic and poses serious health consequences.
Apart from its crowded nature, I realised the facility was located in a very grimy area. Flies abound in the area and meat meant for human consumption is exposed to the flies. Anyone who visits the vicinity is immediately greeted by a nauseating stench.
This undoubtedly poses serious health hazards to people who do business in the area, those who live close by and consumers of the produce. Urgent steps must be taken to address the issue.
Surprisingly, meat sellers and consumers could be seen busily engaged in buying and selling of meat, though from their gesticulations, one could see that they abhor the unsanitary conditions at the place.
I then asked myself if that was the place where all the meat that we consume in Bolgatanga came from. I could only yell, we are in deep trouble!
The Daily Graphic gathered that the butchers relocated to the present site in 1998 after the Bolgatanga Municipal Assembly instituted measures to rehabilitate the old market where they once occupied.
However, 10 years down the line, the rehabilitation of the central market including the new slaughter house has been completed, but the butchers are yet to move into their new environment.
Some butchers who did not want to be named, expressed concern about the unsanitary conditions prevailing at the present site but said they simply did not understand why up to date they had not been allowed to operate from the newly rehabilitated structure.
"We once made an attempt to move into the new structure but we were chased away by some of the market women because they were contesting the assembly on the process of allocation of stores in the markets," said one of the butchers.
They contended that although the renovated slaughter house was too small to contain the large number of butchers currently operating at the old site, they would still have loved to operate at the new structure.
They are all aware of the dangers involved in operating in the prevailing unsanitary environment.
According to the Ministry of Local Government, Rural Development and Environment, Revised Environmental Sanitation Policy, District Assemblies shall ensure that all communities that need slaughtering facilities have access to them, either as public or private facilities. They are to be registered and regularly inspected by the district assembly.
Why then have the butchers not been relocated to the slaughter house that was sponsored by the government and the European Union fifth Micro Finance Projects Programme for all this while, warranting the sale of meat in unsanitary condition to the innocent public? This was the question I posed to the Bolgatanga Municipal Co-ordinating Director, Mr Philibert Kuupol.
In his response, Mr Kuupol said initially the assembly had planned to inaugurate the entire market before allowing the traders to operate in. He, however, stated that there was a misunderstanding over the allocation process and that stalled the process.
Mr Kuupol said the problem had been sorted out and hopefully the market and the meat shop would be opened for business. He could not, however, give the exact date for the relocation of the butchers.
Responding to the concerns by the butchers that the new structure was too small, the Municipal Co-ordinating Director said aside the new meat shop, some adjoining stalls had been allocated to the butchers to serve as meat shop to accommodate all the meat sellers.
Touching on the unsanitary nature of the old slaughter house, Mr Kuupol said the ideal situation was to site the abattoir outside town where the animals could be killed and transported to the meat shop for sale to the general public.
"There is the need for us to organise the place properly because whether we like it or not, we all eat meat from the place; it is, therefore, necessary we keep the place clean," he said.
Mr Kuupol, however, gave the assurance that the assembly would do all in its power to ensure that the new meat shop was opened and the butchers relocated to ensure that the public was served with hygienic meat.
A healthy mind, it is said, is in a healthy body. And a body can be healthy if it lives in a healthy environment.
As stated by the Health Minister, Major Courage Quashigah (retd), at the launch of the Sixth National Food Safety Week in Accra in July, this year, inadequate sanitation leads to eight deaths in the country every hour, topping the list of all causes of mortality.
The minister was quoted as saying that the total number of yearly outpatient cases reported with food-borne diseases such as diarrhoea, typhoid, cholera and hepatitis, was about 420,000 with annual death rate of not less than 65,000.
Again, Major Quashigah was reported to have said, “Diarrhoea diseases from consumption of raw and rotten vegetables and fruits, meat and fish production and processing, including street foods, are usually closely linked to poor hygiene.”
The sanitation situation at the present slaughter house at Bolgatanga is deteriorating by the day and the fear is that this might lead to increase in sanitation-related diseases among the people.
If Bolgatanga in particular and Ghana in general is to make strides in its efforts to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) on sanitation practices, there is the need for the authorities concerned to provide the meat-consuming public a decent meat shop.