Newspapers in this country have reported and continue to report on the growing threat of the siting of fuel dispensing stations in residential areas.
The practice has become so alarming with strong rumours making the rounds that some politicians and other influential persons in our society who have the connections and the means are buying landed properties in residential areas, fence them and then spring up construction of fuel stations.
There are even cases where some of these filling stations are sited along or in waterways, with authorities doing virtually nothing about them.
Is it to suggest that our regulatory bodies, including the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Ghana National Fire Service (GNFS), National Petroleum Authority (NPA) and the Ministry of Environment, Science and Technology (MEST) are not seeing the haphazard construction of fuel stations in residential areas are causing?
Or it is a case of we have seen them but there is nothing that can be done about them?
We ask the above question because the proximity of some of the filling stations to residential facilities gives cause for worry.
Meanwhile the NPA’s regulation stipulates that gas and fuel stations should be sited at a minimum of 30.8 metres or 100 feet away from residential areas.
THAT definitely is not the practice on the ground.
AN audit around the country will confirm that the NPA’s regulation is being flouted with impunity.
The fact is that many of these fuel stations have bypassed this regulation and are operating.
What, however, baffles us is the EPA’s justification that it is normal practice for fuel stations to be sited close to human habitation.
We do not think that anybody is disputing that fact, nevertheless, what has become the bone of contention is their closeness to human habitation.
That is what people are complaining about which we believe they are right to raise such concerns.
It is important for both the EPA and the NPA to tell Ghanaians, specifically what the regulation says on siting of a fuel situation.
We are calling for this clarity because whilst the EPA is stressing that there is nothing wrong in siting fuel stations close to residential facilities, the NPA is advocating that fuel stations be built 500 metres apart from each other.
Today thus believe that this clarity would help the regulatory bodies to deal with fuel dispensing stations which have fallen foul of it.
We must not wait for disaster to strike before we act. A word to a wise is…
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