Exhibit high professionalism in discharging of duties
Odumase, October 23, 2022
Ms Gifty Nyarko, the Sunyani West Municipal Physical Development Planning Director has implored colleague planners to exhibit high sense of professionalism in discharging their daily duties to enhance climate resilience.
According to her, planners are amongst the major players in mitigating climate change, because the results of their decision in their duties have great positive or negative impacts on societal development.
She said this in an interview with newsmen on the sidelines of the Ghana Institute of Planners (GIP) maiden one-day climate justice promotion capacity building and knowledge sharing event held last Tuesday.
It was on the theme: “Climate Change, inequalities and Building a Local Resilience: Promoting Climate Justice through Planning Activism”.
It was organized by the Sunyani Zone of the GIP to educate planners, students planners and other stakeholders to prioritize issues of climate change in their policies and activities.
Ms Nyarko stated “we must be firm with planning decisions and planners must work without fear and interferences as well as planning interventions should always focus on environmental and social justices as priority”.
Adding that, the impact of climate change is severely felt in the country, hence, the need for high professionalism to prevent scrupulous human activities contributing to global warming and its devastations.
Ms Nyarko indicated that the public normally blame planners for any unauthorized developments and its impact, “but for me, we planners should be bold to make positive impact in what ever we do and where ever we find ourselves even if people may hate us for doing the lawful and right things”.
She said the vulnerable people are those suffering most from the severe heat of climate crises, therefore the welfare of vulnerable and persons with Disabilities should be paramount in any interventions, more especially access to land for the vulnerable groups in society.
Ms Nyarko also pleaded with Chiefs to avoid giving verbal authorization to developers to develop, because development and planning permits are sole authority of the district assemblies through spatial planning committees.
When we have resilient cities, the country would be able to stand shock of climate change and the Goal 11 of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals which talks about livable and sustainable cities would be achieved and go a long way to achieve goal 15, Ms Nyarko noted.
Ms Nyarko pleaded with the Ministry of Local Government, Decentralization and Rural Development for logistics such as Office spaces and furniture, vehicle for regular monitoring to check unauthorized developers, set of computers and scanners for proper records keeping and documentation, saying, professionalism goes with adequate logistics.
She said though staff strength of planners have been increased in the various District, but does not reflect in terms of resources, therefore the logistics would help them execute their mandates very effectively.
Madam Justina Owusu-Banahene, the Bono Regional Minister, on her part observed the galamsey is a big threat to climate change mitigation and resilience, therefore urged the Traditional Authorities who are custodians of the land to strongly collaborate with the government in the galamsey fight to protect the environment for both current and unborn generations.
Mad. Owusu-Banahene further charged the Municipal and District Chief Executives in the region to ensure the Assembly by-laws were used to strictly deal with all environment devastations activities.
Osabarima Kwabena Yeboah Ababio, the Kontrihene of Odumase No1 traditional area and Chairman of the event also added the hightening indiscriminate human activities are the causes of the escalating flooding in recent times and bringing the entire country to high level of vulnerability.
“Let’s prioritize environmental and social justices as well as promoting tree planting on routine bases to conserve our water bodies and the entire ecosystem”, he stated.
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