Lecture with GIPAC

A Ghana Institute for Pure and Applied Chemistry (GIPAC)

Laboratory Health and Safety for Schools and Colleges at Chemu Secondary School Tema 

Dey-Innovations Limited was proud to be given the opportunity to lecture at the event 

               

Home Safety, Electrical

Remember that risk is not only in the work environment, with electrical equipment widely used in the household it is very important we always keep our guard. 

• Remember that water and electricity does not mix 
• That means if your hands or feet are wet, do not touch any electrical equipment 
• Make sure you test all electrical equipment to ensure they are not leaking electricity
• Remember there are more vulnerable people in the house hold (kids) so think ahead and reduce the risk 
• Mop the floor when water spills from the fridge 
• Do not leave the fridge in a puddle of water 
• Have a good clean with the towel after bathing before touching the iron 
• Do not insert and naked wires without plugs into sockets 

Put your fridge on a plate form not directly on the floor 

Plug your fridge and other electrical equipment through a stabilizer to reduce the effect of power surge.

The schematics of electrical supply to the household, showing the volts being pulled.

Do not use home made extension lead sockets, they are not made to factory standard with best practice and safety net.

A simple calculation 

Watts / Volts = Amps 

The average electrical supply to a house is 240v 

The average watts of a house hold iron is 1200 to 1500w 

Thus 1200/240 = 5 Amps 

A kettle pulls just as much watts 1200 - 1500watts 

Look behind the home electrical equipment to get to know the current being pulled by the equipment. 

Osu Oxford Street, Boulevard

Osu Oxford Street, I call it Osu Oxford Street Boulevard, it just adds a little bet more of a class to the name, or wouldn't you agree? Just let it sink in for a minute, you will see what I mean. 

A country is like a house, the capital its living room and all the other rooms form part of the countryside, the other towns and villages. When one gets a visitor, they are welcomed in the living room, the presentation of the living room tells the visitor, the kind of pride one has in their own house and what the rest of the house is going to look like, as such more effort is placed on the living room, this makes Osu Oxford Street our best seat in the house (one of) and this parable of notion stands. 

Osu Oxford Street is the street that never sleeps, if in Accra and you feel like going out, but not sure what for or where to go exactly, then Osu Oxford street is your safe and best bet. Be it on your own and needing crowd company or with a group, Osu Oxford Street will always provide the best feel of a night out. 

In the day time too, with all the shops opened from jewelry to clothes, coffee bars and restaurants Osu Oxford Street has always got the answer to the question you do not know you are asking. 

For most expatriates Osu Oxford Street just feels right, you go there and you are bound to bump into another expatriate, start a conversation and you have an expatriate friend in Accra. Ghanaians are just as friendly if not the friendliest in Africa and so you are never alone is Osu Oxford Street. 

As a location in the tourism industry, Osu Oxford is highly featured in Accra. The Republic Bar and Container are among the places that have really made a name for themselves when it comes to a night out.

The trouble here is as with all other places in Accra, the lack of bins around, truth is you will be lucky to find a single public bin on the Osu Oxford Streets or its side streets. This begs the question, where do people dump their refuse and waste, and the answer is to be found in the gutters; from used car tire to plastic bottles all sitting comfortably in the gutter. 

The recent addition of the shopping mall has added to the human traffic and thrill in Osu Oxford Street with the increase in pedestrians on the roads there hasn't been a rethink of the demand on the already inefficient and un-managed system in place.

If there was one place that needed to be project well in Accra it is Osu Oxford Street and yet all the stakeholders are slow to take on the responsibility. The city council can be blamed for a lack of effective policies and implementation, but so too will the shop and restaurant owners in the area, after all it is their products and services that are patronized and largely it is their image that is at stake, but in totality it is the image of Ghana that is at stake and our investment into the growth and sustainability of our tourism industry. 

Again here the solution is simple, if the city council has not got the will power, the business community can come together and set up a local consortium that then contracts out the cleaning of the streets, provision of bins and any repairs that may be needed to a third party. It is a simple matter of owning one's own environment and addressing the problem that all stakeholders are uncomfortable with. 

The consortium locally funded by the business community gets to stipulate into the agreement performance review measures and hold the third party tasked to manage the Osu Oxford Street, road and gutters accountable, doing away with the long process of chasing the local council with all the bureaucracy and limited resource to manage the hygiene issues on the Osu Oxford Street. 

As it stands of cause Dey-Innovations Limited is more than happy to take on the role with a detailed program to help develop the necessary structure. It is about time we not only complain of the hygiene problems that face the city, but also take locally engineered and financed steps to deal with the issue for the collective benefit of the whole community. 

A look at the current state of the gutter in Osu Oxford Street, Accra 

A general look at Osu Oxford Street and the feel and excitement of experience one gets visiting the place 

                         

                       



The definition of a civilized society is not just to do with affluence and buying power but also is to do with its ability to control its environment to prevent a health hazard.

Think safety, hygiene and welfare, act now..

The Accra Problem At Next Door

The Impact of Plastic Pollution Accra Next Door Resort. (Health, Safety and Well-being)

              

Next Door on the Labadi, Teshie road was one of the places to be in the (90s) and early (2000s) it gave the residents of Accra a nice place to hang out with friends and family for drinks or to dine. The rocks gives this sense of adventure when you walk on them, coursing your way through like a great explorer, the jumps and skips and the rate at which the waves come in, to hit the rocks all adds to the joy one gets when one visits Next Door. The little ponds of water between the rocks that forms for the small fishes to seek refuge all adds to the sense of paradise. It is less hectic than the Labadi beach and it is all because the shoreline is made of  rocks and not sea sand.

Next Door and the rocks are lover's choice, not a weekend passes by without one noticing a couple sitting or walking on the rocks hand in hand. Nature is beautiful for even sitting on the rocks enjoying the sea breeze is priceless and such joy of memory to have. As a prime location Next Door serves the tourism industry and it is favored by the expatriate community and the local residence.

Unfortunately due to the attitude of the population in Accra when it comes to waste and the city's inactive management of plastic pollution and other waste such as baby pampers, all these pollution products end up in the gutters and on the streets all around the city.  The rain is our only saving grace, that washes away all the plastics polluted waste from our streets and gutters, though no sooner has the rain finished washing the plastic waste, do we again start damping our waste on the streets. A look into any of the big gutters or drains in the city when it is raining and you are met with layers and layers of plastic bottles and empty sachet water bags as well as the small black rubber bags that are used as service bags when we buy products from the vendors being washed to sea. One gets the bag, some times even two, a clear white and a black bag, from buying items such as ice cream, to coconut, roasted plantain, waakye, kenkey literally almost every product one buys you are likely to be given a black bag to carry along.

Due to the culture as stated earlier and the lack of bins around, from kids to adults it is common to witness someone drink a sachet water and just drop the plastic on the floor right where they stand. We all get to live in a city where our gutters are chocked up because of the plastics pollution and this leads to floods every time it rains in Accra.

For the plastic waste that makes it out to sea, they become death traps for the fishes, where some consume the plastics thinking they are food and others being wrapped around by the plastics and ending up drowning. Though majority of the plastic waste that goes out to sea, with the rain water comes back to shore. It has become common to see each sea wave all cross the beaches of Accra with black plastic bags in them, wave upon wave, like the ghost haunt by the sea, throwing out our skeletons in the closet, the beach landings have all got plastic waste pollution on them.

In Next Door, the situation is even worse, this is due to the rocks there, when the high tide comes in, it washes all the plastics especially bottles and the sachet into the rocks and leaves them behind since the rocks acts like a sieve holding back all that is not liquid, this is where the sea spits with disgust the horrible taste we put in its mouth.

All around Next Door as can be seen in the pictures below, rows and rows of washed up plastics, it is safe to assume that along the coast of Accra or Ghana for that matter, anywhere they are rocks rather than sea sand at the beach the same crime would be evidence there. The beauty of Next Door has been lost from the rocks, the romance and memories one aims from visiting there is corrupted by the epidemic presence of plastics waste washed up from the sea with anger.

      

There is evidence of an attempt at Next Door to deal with the issue by the management team, from time to time burning the plastic, but truthfully their facilities maintenance and management of Next Door is poor, a management issue adding to the negative impact on Next Door's patronage. Plastic pollution is a continuous problem with a grass root underlining cause that needs to be tackled. All the sachet water companies have present their waste there and as such have to be stakeholders in building a consensus on raiding the country and Accra of our plastic pollution problem.

                         

From the authorities a simple step, would be to ban the use of the black bags as career bags and have a degradable material such as a paper form used as brown paper career bags. A sense of responsibility and public awareness has to be created to help encourage recycling increasing the current efforts  after all even presently there is an economic market value for recycling these plastic bottles and sachet bags.

The provision of recycle bins all around the city and the scheduled regular collection of these bins and the introduction of fines and or prosecution of culprits found committing these environmental crimes would serve as an incentive to help change the culture and perception of society. We can not accept the current statues quo as a civilized society, the impact is clear and present as a danger to our society.

We should feel a sense of guilt seeing plastic pollution all over the city, we should feel a sense of responsibility to confront those we catch polluting our city, we should feel a sense of duty to ensure we place our plastic waste in the recycle bins rather than on the streets and in the gutters. we should live by our pledge to the country.