The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has ordered the shutdown of a plastic processing factory at Asutuare in the Shai Osudoku District of the Greater Accra Region accused of severe air pollution.

A senior high school in the area has been closed down due to the pollution from the Shinefeel Ghana Company Limited.

The directive for the company shutdown was given after a three-man delegation from the EPA visited the area on Monday.

After the tour, the EPA delegation concluded that the plastic unit plant was breaching key standards.

The directive to shutdown was also because the Chinese company had no permit to operate as a plastic processing unit.

“The fact of the matter is that they are permitted to do the paper aspect of the operations. They may have been permitted for a plastic operation in Accra, but not for Asutsuare. On record, we don’t have that,” Executive Director in charge of Technical at the EPA, Ebenezer Sampong, told Citi FM.

The Osudoku Senior High School was shut down last Friday after Headmistress of the school, Sylvia Baaba Yankey explained the school can no longer contain the harmful smoke emitted by a toiletries and plastics manufacturing company owned by Chinese close by.

She said academic work has been affected and after a series of agitations by students, the school authorities have decided on a temporary closure until the issue is dealt with.

"The boy’s dormitory and the classroom block are close to the factory. Since Tuesday the stench and the smoke which for some time now has subsided erupted again. Ghana Education Service is very much aware of the situation,” she said in an interview recently.

Meanwhile, Mr Sampong has said there plans to relocate the secondary school since it is sited in an industrial area.

“In the immediate term, the plastic facility has to comply with the requirements of our law, that is, the environmental assessment regulations. Facilities like that need to go through an assessment process and obtain a permit. They started before that, and we are going to ask them to close that part of the operations and then comply with the requirements… It means that you need to convince us that the continuous operation of this facility will not cause environmental damage,” he explained.