Yaw Atta Arhin, Vice Chairperson of CONIWAS addressing journalists and other stakeholders
THE Environmental Service Providers Association of Ghana (ESPA) and the Coalition of NGOs in Water and Sanitation (CONIWAS) have made an appeal to government to offset outstanding debts owed them to enhance their operations.
At a joint press conference held at the Coconut Groove Hotel in Accra, the two organizations laid out some of the challenges they faced in their daily work activities in sanitation and its related issues.
Addressing journalists, Vice Chairperson of CONIWAS, Yaw Atta Arhin, explained that due to the absence of adequate recycling and treatment facilities and engineered landfills across the nation; and with Accra alone generating about 3000 metric tonnes of waste a day, most of the wastes are collected and dumped in controlled and uncontrolled dumpsites nationwide.
“The country has only four engineered landfill sites. With regards to landfill operations, the few available ones are currently struggling with continuous breakdown of equipment due to huge debts owed by government. A situation which has resulted in the landfills acting more or less as controlled dumpsite,” he stated.
He added that the hazardous nature of some of the landfills and the inaccessibility of other dumpsites during some parts of the year, result in long days of queuing to dump.
The prolonged delays at the landfills coupled with other challenges, he noted, led to increased backlog of waste in the cities and intermittent service delivery by private waste service providers.
Mr. Arhin iterated that “without the support of government, many of our service providers have collapsed and some are on the verge of collapasing due to high taxes such as VAT and import duties, making it difficult for them to break even.”
He opined that with government currently owing landfill operators more than GH¢42 million, failure to pay may force the operators to withdraw services due to inability to service equipment required for managing the landfill and to pay workers.
“We urgently call on government to pay all outstanding debts owed to landfill operators to ensure the efficient operation of these sites,” he said.
Additionally, they also urged government, to among others, pay attention to the expansion of infrastructure, saying the current infrastructure capacity is quickly being exhausted if not already exhausted.
“In wake of the impending rainfall season and given the current state of landfill, waste service providers are in grave fear of the potential dangers of the lack of a suitable place to dump.
“Going forward, the government, through district assemblies, would be required to provide requisite infrastructure comprising transfer stations, recycling and treatment plants and final disposal facilities in the MMDAs linked by good road networks,” he said.
By Nii Adjei Mensahfio