An officer at the Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA) has revealed it is illegal to preach outside in Ghana without a noise regulation permit.

Mrs Florence Kuukyi, the Public Health Director, AMA, spoke to Taller Dee on Journey to Heaven on No.1 FM, 105.3.

“All the pastors who preach outside are supposed to get noise regulation permits,” she said.

“They are supposed to preach between the hours of 5:30 AM and 9 AM, also.”

She explained, “Because by 9, people are at work and you cannot disturb them with noise.”

“If we find you flouting this regulation, we seize your public address system and take action against you,” she warned.

Mrs Kuukyi noted progress chalked and setbacks encountered by the AMA when it comes to religious gatherings in a country which is overwhelmingly Christian in population.

“We’ve closed down a lot of church because of excessive noise,” she said.

“We’ve closed down a lot of church because of excessive noise because it’s within a residential area.”

She clarified these religious establishments did not have permits to begin with. She added the AMA does not grant permits to establish chapels in residential areas.

“We don’t give permits for such areas. No assembly gives permits to build churches in residential areas,” she said.

However, she indicated, “there are instances where people use their residences as churches. There are a lot illegalities going on in the system”.

Here, she lamented when individuals are apprehended for breaching the law, they use their contacts to powerful people in authority to weasel out of the grip of the law.

Mrs Kuukyi emphasised the AMA was hard at work to control noise pollution in the capital city of Accra, only that due to the lack of “direct contact in the media,” they are not able to broadcast such stories.

She said, in fact, there were reports every quarter indicating the people prosecuted on food hygiene and noise issues.

She advocated collaborating with the media to broadcast such cases for the purposes of education and deterrence.

On what has hindered such collaboration in the past, per her experience, she said some media persons were fond of asking for financial motivations to publish their stories “even though they know we are getting no nothing [monetary] from the story ourselves”.