The Eastern Region is recording alarming incidents of bushfires in all Municipal and District Assemblies this harmattan season.
The bushfires are mostly caused by farmers, hunters, cigarette and wee smokers.
Many properties mainly ECG installations including electricity poles have been burnt.
The Ghana National Fire Service is worried about the rate of outbreaks.
According to the Regional Fire Commander Assistant Chief Fire Officer(1) Mrs Jennifer Naa Yarley Quaye, 144 cases of bushfires have so far been recorded in the region.
” We are in January now, and when we compare the statistics from January 2020 last year, In 2020 around January by now we recorded 59 bush fires, last year January 2021 we recorded 6 bush fires which are the lowest and we were fortunate, but this year 2022 had gone up because we are now in January and we have so far recorded 144 bush fires in the Eastern region so I’m pleading to the general public to be cautious of how they about burning their bushes and the weeds in our environment,” she said.
According to the Public Relations Officer of the Electricity Company of Ghana, ECG, Emmanuel Halm, dozens of Electricity poles have been burnt in parts of the region due to bushfires.
“These bush fires actually have very serious effects, we have had instances where cables have been suspended because of these fires, some poles are now tilted and we have to take emergency measures to go and repair these faults. What we saying is the bush fires are having negative effects on our operations in terms of finances, the man ours that we have to repair those faults due to these human-made disasters we have to spend a lot of money to repair such damages caused to our networks”.
He continued “recently, it took the intervention of the fire service to just quench a fire along the Suhum- Koforidua road and then we also had another one from Suhum- Adoagyiri road. We are appealing to the media also to help us to educate our customers on the effects of bush fires on our networks. We are in the dry season and such seasons we usually record bush fires, what we are saying is ECG as the company is for all of us and all the networks that we have created is to serve our customers, when such outages occur it is bringing inconveniences to our customers which is not intended by the company so we, therefore, appeal to all of you to help us to educate the customers to save the company cost and also help us to delight our customers”
He urged the public to desist from indiscriminate burnings of weed near ECG installations.
“We have always advised farmers in our various educations that if you are burning close to our bushes please try to make fire belts around the poles for this will help us to sustain the operations of the region. We have also observed that some people who go hunting in chase of the bush game usually set fires and when the animals escape, it also turns to escape them to put out such fires and usually results in burning of our bushes so we would appeal to all be cautious of such activities. This is our greatest challenge in this dry season, recently just around the Koforidua materials office there was a fire which nearly destroyed a transformer which is very costly and this is very sad indeed”
Emmanuel Halm stated that ECG is losing huge monies to bushfire devastations.
“As we speak, the poles that we use to replace such incidents are very expensive so we would plead with the general public to bear with us and then help us in this direction by being responsible towards our network to help us to serve them well”.
Source: Mybrytnewsroom.com/Obed Ansah
