Residents of James-Town, a suburb of Accra, are being exposed to serious health risks by inhaling dangerous chemicals that could have deleterious effect on their health.

The situation is due to the unsupervised and unchecked slaughter of animals at the Old Slaughter House of James-Town, with the use of used lorry tyres in preparing the slaughtered animals for sale to the general public.

People interviewed by the Ghana News Agency at the Ashiedu Keteke Sub-Metro Court confirmed that the situation has been identified as a major problem in the area, which often disrupted court proceedings because of the endless supply tyre fumes emanating from the butchers.

Mr. Sampson Asare Boadu, Chief Environmental Health Technologist and also Officer in-Charge of the Ashiedu Keteku AMA Sub-Metro, said there was a limit to the efforts of Environmental Health Officers in the area, saying despite the numerous notices, education and even summons to appear in court to the offending butchers the practice has continued unabated.

He said “you and I know that the smoke emitting from burning these tyres used in preparing the slaughtered animals contains carcinogens like carbon monoxide, dioxide and nitrous oxide and other dangerous inorganic compounds that can cause cancer, but no one seems to care”.

Mr. Boadu said “to me the biggest challenge over this issue rests with the politicians and how they perceived the issues of sanitation within the area because we are fed up with our relentless efforts,” he said.

The Health Technologist said everybody was aware of the issue of sanitation and how hazardous it could be to the health of the people yet, “we issue summons for people to appear in court to be punished, but before you realize it had been intercepted on the orders of someone without any tangible reasons and the culprit goes free.”

When the GNA contacted the National Chief Butcher, Alhaji Sofo Zakari over the illegal slaughtering of animals at the Old Slaughter House, he said the Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA) should stringently enforce its environmental bye-laws to bring sanity to the area.

He said “we have issued butchers licenses to our members in order to flush out the fake ones among us so the AMA should intensify its health enforcement program.”

Alhaji Zakari said butchers, who engaged in the illegal practices should be arrested and prosecuted.**