Close Them Down Now!

......And i saw hundreds running helter-skelter from Madina when I moved out from a shop at Adenta Filling; both young and old running for their dear lives barefooted.

Consequently, I got scared because I also saw a long queue of vehicles gearing backwards as I witnessed a thick Orange-like cloudy fire in the sky. The burning smoky cloudy fire seems very close to Adenta.

It was getting scary and all of a sudden, an earthquake followed another explosive sound

......we all ended up running away from our homes as the rain begun to pour.

I am writing with much anger, pains and tears within me.

It's taking me hours to calm my angered nerves down in order to write this.

Nothing Has Changed.
We have been here before and several times we seem to be Massaging our ignorance and Exposing our mediocrity as leaders.

Early this year we lost lives including the sister of Hon Alan Kyeremanteng. In 2015, do remember what happened at Circle? Same filling stations disaster.

Lives were traded for shared negligence and we setup committee over policies, wasted taxpayers money and nothing happen.

We are losing innocent lives to negligence and for God sake, we don't need another policy and law to resolve this.

Common sense in basic Safety Management and our intuition apparently can tell us that it's practically unwise and unsafe to have ;

1. Fuel and Gas stations along and within our Roadsides and residential areas

2. More than one flammable station's closer or within an acreage

Fortunately, these common senses happen to be in our regulations for God Sake. Where is EPA? GSA? NPA?

We are paying the Directors of these Agencies and regulators a lot of money as salaries with Tax payers money but we seem not to benefit but rather losing lives out of their negligence and nothing happen to them.

Where is the Legal Punishment?
In the oil and gas industry which includes the downstream ( transportation and Fuel Retail Stations), there is a health and safety regulation law called Tort that legally punishes negligence.

Negligence of their duty of care to protect both employees and citizen's lives.

we must begin to apply the Tort and punish gas station owners and Ceo/ Directors of Regulators for their negligence: the Ceo/ Directors of government Regulators who are directly involved in the permits of sitting stations and poor role.

SIMPLE SOLUTION:
1. Setup a Safe Centralized Station (CS) in each District and convert all gas and fuel stations illegally sited into Consumer Collection Points. (CCP)

(a) The Collection point (CCP) will be an avenue where consumers like me can drop empty cylinders to be sent to the Centralized Station to be filled and returned for my collections.

Gas Fuel Vehicles can drive straight to the CS to fill their tanks.

(b) All CS will be a zone of more than one gas and fuel stations situated far away from the residential zones.

I suggest, after 14 days if we don't hear and see any posture from our leaders that signal positive change, I will surely support UPSA Students, UG Students, Groups from Adenta and Madina and any to demonstrate and advocate for all wrongly sited filling stations to be closed done.

We can't keep trading lives for the selfish interest of station owners and politicians.

(Justice Offei Jr)