The outgoing Minister for Water Resources, Works and Housing, Hackman Owusu-Agyemang, has called on the legislating and implementing authorities to revisit the issue of banning the use of black plastic bags in the country. Mr Owusu-Agyemang told The Statesman the issue should take priority over a ban on water sachet bags, as proposed by the Accra Metropolitan Assembly last week. The Minister said very little attention has been drawn to the environmental hazards of black plastic bags, such as those provided by shops for the transport of merchandise, even though the Ministry of Water Resources, Works and Housing spends a significant portion of its resources in removing the bags from Ghana's lagoons, lakes, rivers, gutters. “The plastic bags choke the waterways. They are not biodegradable, so when people throw them on the ground, they end up in the rivers," Mr. Owusu-Agyemang explained, emphasizing the increase in incidences of flooding, related to waterway clogging, caused in part by the prevalence of plastic bags, such as the black merchandise bags originating in local shops. Flooding is not the only effect of the increased prevalence of black plastic bags. It’s not just the bags, but "what is put inside the bags," Mr. Owusu-Agyemang explained, indicating that people are using the black plastic bags to dispose of a variety of refuse before that refuse turns up in the waterways. The refuse creates an increase in the cleaning bills at water treatment plants like Weija Treatment Works, for increasingly soiled waterways like the Densu River. The Minister referred to the household refuse and human waste-filled bags as "flying toilets" because "when people finish with the bags, they just throw them into the streams." The Ministry for Water Resources, Works and Housing would like to take a page from countries such as Tanzania and Kenya, in their handling of similar pollution problems, by instituting a ban on the merchandise bags at local shops, in favour of people bringing their own bags to the store. As an interim step, Mr Owusu-Agyemang suggested a tariff to store owners for buying the bags, and a ban on giving the bags away to customers free of charge, as has been done successfully in South Africa. Credit: The Statesman