Bushfires destroy 158 wooden high tension poles in UWR
● Burnt high tension poles
The Ghana National Fire Service (GNFS) in the Upper West Region is worried about the continuous burning of high-tension wooden electricity poles in the region due to accidental bushfires.
In the 2021/2022 Dry (Harmattan) season, the GNFS in the region recorded 158 fire incidents involving high-tension poles but personnel were able to salvage 96 of them from getting burnt.
The harmattan season under review normally begins from mid-November to mid-February.
The Regional Staff Officer of the Service, DOIII Alexis Kodi Suonyiri who made this known in a speech at the first session of the 12th parliament of the Upper West Regional Youth Parliament described the situation as worrying and called for attitudinal change in that regard.
He said that the poles were burnt when people indiscriminately set fire to the bushes around them, particularly those along highways.
He could not understand why people continued to set fire to the bush when they were fully aware of the consequences it posed to society and said that the GNFS recorded 32 of such incidents in the year under review.
He stated that the command was putting measures in place to ensure that bush fire would be a thing of the past and stated that aside stepping up education on the need to avoid bush fires, the GNFS had again established bush fire volunteers in many communities across the region to augment the effort of the service in helping to reduce the indiscriminate setting of bush fires to the barest minimum.
DOIII Suonyiri said aside the devastating effect of bush fire to climate change, it also denied the soil of its fertility and affected the livelihood of persons who lost their farms to bushfires which were not even started by them.
He lamented the poor enforcement of the bushfire laws in the region as well as the failure of the Municipal and District Assemblies across the region to constitute bush fire control sub-committees to support the work of the GNFS in checking the menace.
The Staff Officer recommended the clearing of bushes around high-tension poles in the dry season through communal labour to ensure that even if there was bush fire, the poles did not catch fire.
From Lydia Darlington Fordjour, Wa
