Atta Arhin
Coalition of NGOs in Sanitation (CONIWAS) is supporting the idea of raising the petroleum tax to tackle sanitation and pollution challenges of the country.
“We have to sacrifice to improve sanitation in this country,” the group’s Vice Chairman Atta Arhin told Starr FM in Accra yesterday, insisting that “the sanitation tax is going to be painful, but if it’s managed well, it will be worth it.”
The government is proposing a Sanitation and Pollution Levy (SPL) of 10 pesewas on the price per litre of petrol/diesel under the Energy Sector Levies Act (ESLA) to address the problem.
Minister of Parliamentary Affairs, Osei Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu, who is standing in for Finance Minister-designate, Ken Ofori-Atta, announced the new levy during the presentation of the 2021 Budget Statement in Parliament on Friday, adding that notwithstanding the progress that the government has made in the areas of sanitation and pollution, there was still a lot more to be done.
“Specifically, we need to improve urban air quality and combat air pollution; support the re-engineering of landfill sites at Kpone and Oti; support fumigation of public spaces, schools, health centres and markets; revamp/reconstruct poorly managed landfill facilities; construct more sustainable state-of-the-art waste treatment plants both solid and liquid in selected locations across the country,” he stated.
He continued that the government needed to construct waste recycling and compost plants across the country, construct more sanitation facilities to accelerate the elimination of open defecation, construct final treatment and disposal sites for solid and liquid waste, provide dedicated support for the annual maintenance and management of major landfill sites and other waste treatment plants and facilities across the country, and construct medical waste treatment facilities to prevent generation of infectious diseases, especially under the Coronavirus Treatment Programme.
Mr. Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu indicated that these were very critical investments that ought to be made for the benefit and dignity of all Ghanaians, and noted that these would ensure sustainable sanitation management, improve the quality of life and reduce the number of deaths and diseases from poor sanitation.
The CONIWAS Vice Chairman acknowledged that the newly introduced sanitation tax would burden the people, though it would invariably help to tackle sanitation issues of the country.
“Once you introduce more taxes it burdens the poor people you’re trying to help. I think the additional taxes will make life difficult for the people, especially in this era. However, we have to sacrifice to improve sanitation in this country,” Mr. Arhin stressed.
He argued that “if we want to engineer and improve our landfill sites, I’m for the sanitation tax. With open defecation alone, we’re talking about 22% of Ghanaians practicing it and this can’t go on.”
By Ernest Kofi Adu