Petition Tag - encroachment

Achimota School’s antiquated sewerage system, never upgraded since it was installed decades ago, has finally collapsed. It is spilling sewage, including human waste, into some of the gutters, streets and open areas of the campus. This has created a public health crisis that could easily spread deadly communicable diseases throughout the Achimota community of more than 4,500 students and staff, not counting others.

On January 19, 2010, Government health inspectors ordered the school to resolve the problem or shut down. The problem is that Achimota, once Ghana’s leading secondary school and a pacesetter in West African education, is cash-strapped. The school is in a state of general decay and has no money to fix what has now become a huge and expensive sanitation problem.

The clogging and bursting of the sewer pipes has been accelerated by aggressive encroachment by private individuals, who have built homes illegally on school land, often almost directly on top of the sewer system's main lines.

Despite the risks to health caused by the ongoing spillage, there has been no discernible movement toward resolving the crisis. A sense of outrage and frustration is beginning to build among parents, students and alumni, especially since Achimota is a fully government-owned school. As such, it cannot decide, on its own, to raise school fees to expand its maintenance budget. Its hands are tied.

We believe that the Ghana Government has a clear duty to undertake major repair projects such as sewer system replacement at government-owned schools, especially when the school has been ordered by the Government itself to contain an ongoing and escalating public health crisis.

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Give away land along East Court Street, including part of the sidewalk by abandonment, which in fact violates CBD design guidelines.

Impact:

• Destroys forever the historic design and symmetry of the streetscape along this area that has been in existence since 1884.

• Compromises and breaks the historic sidewalk alignment of buildings on East Court and violates CBD design guidelines.

• Allows the building to project out on the street beyond the old Record (now Devereaux) building and the Poinsett Hotel.

• Compromises the symmetrical sight lines offset that the Liberty building and the original Palmetto building had with the old Court House and The Poinsett Hotel.

• Narrows the sidewalk at the point that it enters McBee Plaza.

• Establishes a dangerous precedent for the City to permanently give up part of a very busy sidewalk , currently in frequent use by the public, for private use for a few citizens to build larger condominiums.

• Never allow any improvement on McBee Plaza to within 5 feet of the Developer’s encroachment in the future for either the enjoyment or safety of the Public.

• Permanently impact adjoining landowners from seeking the best and highest use of his property by supporting their encroachment and their limits on any construction within 5 feet of the Developer’s private parking garage.

• Setting a dangerous precedent to give subsurface city land for private underground parking without establishing any criteria for benefits to the public good.

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