Proliferation of ‘Information Centres’, who is the rescuer?
In a moment of deep thinking and reminiscing through life struggles and how to put the pieces to the puzzles ahead, a loud noise struck my ear drum and shifted my focus for the day; it was a noise coming from a 5 miles away information centre.
The establishment of these centres were to inform, educate, address challenges, entertain and importantly make news reachable to the low income earner especially in farming communities who by chance lack technological advancement and finances to equip themselves with gadgets to listen to live radio and important information prioritised for the general public.
But the trend changed 6 years ago when my backyard in Atonsu, Kumasi witnessed a setup of a lengthy mast with horns placed on top that wake inhabitants as early as 4:00 a.m against the individuals schedule, alluded to very high and unacceptable broadcast volumes.
Today it has become one of the most lucrative entities for owners, hosting variety of advertisement for unregistered herbal medicines at long hours with lots of misinformation and speeches lacking logical reasoning, unnecessary sermons (forgive my manners), and above all my worry ‘the noise’. For a fact these avenues are now rampant in the Ghanaian society and are very common than drinking- VC 10 bars.
It becomes strange to see these setup’s close to educational institutions and still have the guts to go live during teaching hours, who does that in this era of modernisation or has the love for noise making affect people’s conscience?
The effect of these loud sounds clinicians would confirm penetrate the eardrum and violently causes damage resulting in hearing impairment. Nonetheless they are selling unregistered drugs same time; a case of two troubles one God.
The Environmental Protection Agency as an organisation has a role to play in putting in measures on how the activities of these entities should be directed or possibly clamp down unauthorised persons to bring sanity into our environment.
