info@businessghana.com
The Minister of Sanitation and Water Resources, Mrs Cecilia Dapaah, yesterday handed over solid waste collection tools and equipment to Municipal and Metropolitan Assemblies (MMAs) to help improve sanitation in the Greater Accra Region.
The equipment, under the Greater Accra Resilient and Integrated Project (GARID), included 17 refuse compactor trucks and 55 motorcycles.
Additionally, the beneficiary Assemblies under the project would be provided with Personal Protective Equipment, cleaning and disinfestation tools such as wheel barrows, shovels, rakes, helmets, safety boots, and reflectors and hand gloves.
As one of the implementing Ministries of the GARID Project, Mrs Dapaah said the Ministry of Sanitation and Water Resources (MoSWR) had a specific oversight over community-based Solid Waste Management SWM interventions and major outreach programmes that sought to reduce the amount of solid waste that flowed into the Odaw channel.
This, she said, was important because the issue of solid waste finding its way into the oceans and other water bodies had become a matter of grave concern to both local and international communities.
Mrs Dapaah noted that “for example, the five major cities in Ghana, namely Accra, Kumasi, Tamale and Tema generate between 500 to 2,000 metric tonnes of solid waste daily out of which an average of 86 per cent is collected and properly therefore.”
“Approximately 10 per cent are left uncollected due to reasons ranging from poor spatial development, poor accessibility to inadequate infrastructure,” she added.
The GARID Project, Mrs Dapaah explained, was currently undertaking activities such as capping of the old dump site at Abloadjei at Ga East Municipality, construction of transfer station at Ghana Atomic Energy Commission GAEC in Ga East Municipality, and the construction of Landfill and Material Recovery facility at Ayidan in the Ga South municapility.
The activities, she added, was to support the objectives of the GARID Project of ensuring waste were prevented from entering into the country’s water bodies.
Mrs Dapaah further urged the beneficiary MMAs to ensure that the equipment was well maintained in order to serve its purpose.
She hinted that her ministry was thinking of institutionalising a Cleanest Lorry Park and Market Award Scheme and making it part of the District League Decentralisation and Rural Development.
According to Mrs Dapaah, this would create a healthy competition among MMAs with the aim of ensuring that commercial areas were kept clean.
