The Ministry of Environment, Science, Technology, and Innovation has revealed that it is partnering with car assembling plants in the country, to scale up the production of electric vehicles.

The Ministry says the initiative is to reduce the use of carbon-emission vehicles and their effect on climate change.

Chief Director of the Ministry, Cynthia Asare-Bediako made this known in an interview with JoyNews on the sidelines of the 9th Regional Conference of the Global Initiative for West, Central, and Southern Africa - GI WACAF in Accra.

The conference is to deliberate on the region’s preparedness in tackling oil spillage.

According to her "there are already engagements going on with the car manufacturing companies to also produce more of the electric cars so that we can move away from the fuel cars, and few has already been piloted. There is already a committee that has been put in place to facilitate this so we are working on it.

"With the recent change and reorganization of the educational system, we are also preparing students on how to either manufacture, maintain or deal with electric vehicles through the TVET and STEM projects."

Call for Comprehensive Measures on Oil Spillage

In her opening address at the conference, Cynthia Asare-Bediako called for more comprehensive measures to tackle the oil spillage crisis.

"As it stands now, none of the renewable energy sources can replace petroleum. Hence, in the next foreseeable future, we would still have to depend largely on petroleum, especially oil and gas. For that matter, many African countries like Ghana may continue to explore for petroleum."

"That is why it is very essential and noble objective to design a project that aims at seeking interventions to address possible oil spills and ensuring readiness and preparedness to respond to any such accidents.

Meanwhile, Chairman for the conference and Oil Spill Preparedness and Response Specialist for TotalEnergies, Anatole Cramer is hopeful that the biannual event will come out with a workable document to tackle the menace.

"We have gathered a large panel of experts, with considerable individual expertise and an enormous collective wealth of international experience in all aspects of preparedness and response in line with the project's philosophy to contribute to this."

This year's conference will review the progress achieved since the last Regional Conference and foster discussions to set the strategic priorities for the next biennium (2023-2024). It is happening from November 7 to 10 at the Labadi Beach Hotel.