The Member of Parliament for Assin South Constituency in the Central Region, Rev John Ntim Fordjour, has asked Ghanaian businessmen and women to slow down on the increasing investments in fuel stations and look for other avenues.
The Assin South legislator said “I will throw a challenge to Ghanaian businessmen to tone down the appetite of setting up fuel stations because it looks as if everyone gets money or funding and sites fuel or gas stations”.
The New Patriotic Party (NPP) MP told Winston Amoah on 3FM’s Sun Rise that he would have wished people do invest in agriculture, manufacturing, industrial minerals as viable areas.
His comments follows the deadly gas explosion at Atomic Junction near Madina in Accra last week Saturday, making it the eighth explosion within a year.
Rev Ntim Fordjour said “anyone gets free money or free funding and look for land to site a fuel station, but if that appetite is not kept and checked we will find ourselves in trouble because the guidelines that even set out the sitting of these stations…it is without recourse as to whether it should be sited in a residential area”.
The man of God added that “there is a new policy direction that we must go. One of the ways to deal with it is the change in policy direction. We must move away from the sporadic sitting of these fuel stations.”
Rev Ntim Fordjour reiterated Parliament’s calls for the prosecution of owners of fuel stations who fail to adhere to the safety standards.
He added that “in safety management the first thing to do is to eliminate the hazards as much as possible. If it is possible to eliminate the hazard that is what you do, but if it is not possible to completely eliminate them, then you manage them”.
Rev Ntim Fordjour advised “There is new policy direction that we must go and that is sitting giants gas bottling plants across the country and zoning them out about six or four zones and having the already existing gas fuel stations as distribution outlets who will go with trucks and buy them, bottle them and then come and man them at their retail shops…just as we buy bottle drinks”.
He noted that “if such policy is adopted, whether the distribution is sited close to a residential area or not, we minimize the onsite hazards”.
By Kweku Antwi-Otoo|Onua 95.1FM|3news.com|Ghana