Accra, Nov. 18, GNA - A stakeholders workshop organised by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to discuss ways of reducing industrial impacts on the environment through the establishment of National Cleaner Production Centres (NCPC) opened in Accra on Thursday.

The two-day workshop is aimed at educating the more than 70 participants from industrial and manufacturing establishments across the country to use production techniques that would be environmentally friendly, reduce production cost and maximise profits.

Mr Kofi Osei-Ameyaw, Deputy Minister of Trade and Industry, said industry and manufacturing establishments were being re-engineered to play the desired role in the growth agenda of the country. "The establishment of a Cleaner Production Centre should, therefore, lead to a change in attitudes and mind set in industries by finding a new approach to the relationship between industry and the environment through re-engineering industrial process that would produce the desire results," he said.

Government, he noted, was committed to the establishment of the National Cleaner Production Centre and the Cleaner Production Assessment Programme.

"Cleaner production methodologies are less costly to install, operate and maintain, in the short to long term, because they result in reduced cost of raw materials, energy, pollution control, waste treatment including clean up and finally regulatory compliance," Mr Osei-Ameyaw said.

He said the persistence of the EPA and UNIDO since 1995 to work towards the realisation of the establishment of the NCPC in Ghana and the support from the African Roundtable on Sustainable Consumption and Production (ARSCP) required the support of both private and public institutions.

He pledged the Ministry's support in the development of a science and technology-led sector that would exploit international markets on a sustainable basis to generate higher growth rates and contribute towards wealth creation.

Mr Daniel Amlalo, Director of Operations, EPA, expressed the hope that with the incorporation of the cleaner production and sustainable consumption and production approaches into industry's environmental management, there would be strategies to assist EPA to achieve its aim of ensuring environmental compliance at all levels.

He said as from June next year the EPA would start applying the environmental performance rating and public disclosure approach towards attaining high compliance from industries.