Ghana celebrates noise awareness day

Concerts and speakers planned?

From Accra Mail:

As we mark this year's noise awareness day, we need to pursue noise reduction as a poverty reduction strategy to reduce our outpatient visits to ear clinics.

To pursue a better institutional collaboration, the police would have to be equipped to respond to persistent noise nuisances rapidly since most regulatory authorities do not work 24 hours and on weekends and holidays.

A national agenda to undertake massive noise education should be the priority of metropolitan, municipal and district assemblies with support from the Environmental Protection Agency. This will help citizens to know their rights and responsibilities to reduce noise when the peace is breached by the lawless few in our communities.

As a way of further enhancing our existing land-use schemes, there is a need for authorities to weed out or refuse permits to noisy development projects that find their way at the wrong places. Every community especially residential areas and other sensitive facilities should have permissible and prohibitive levels of noise scribbled on buildings. Slogans prohibiting noise making and others that encourage noise reduction should be mounted at entry points to various communities.

As we commemorate the 3rd National Noise Awareness Day, it is our fervent hope that noise reduction will be everybody's priority to reduce its stress related symptoms and save our hearing. We must call on all communities to desist from activities that expose the youth and aged to excessive noise. We want return to pristine times when pleasant and soothing sounds like birds singing and wind movements in trees are heard.