The Chief Executive Officer of Zoomlion Ghana Limited, Dr Joseph Siaw Agyepong, has said the main solution to Ghana’s waste challenge, is to ensure that every household has a waste bin to store waste, which is a basic pre-requisite in waste management.
Dr Agyepong, who made these remarks at a stakeholders’ forum on Sanitation organised in Accra, revealed that improper waste storage continues to hinder the progress of work done by waste contractors.
He said: “When these waste are not stored in a waste bin for collection by the waste contractor, then we are assured that it might end up at unauthorised places, hence the urgent need to ensure that households have waste bins and sanitation regulations enforced to change attitudes for effective waste management”.
Dr Agyepong added that Zoomlion’s intervention in waste management through the desilting of the Odaw drain, has averted flooding, which claimed several lives two years ago.
“Despite not being paid for our desilting works on the Odaw drain, Zoomlion is still committed to desilting the odor drain to save lives and properties which has been a phenomenon anytime we experience a heavy sown pour of rains”, he added.
Dr. Agyepong mentioned the Accra Compost and Recycling Plant, waste transfer stations, plastics recycling, medical waste treatment and solving Ghana’s 100 years’ problem of discharging waste into the sea by providing a faecal treatment plant as some innovations introduced by Zoomlion to solve Ghana’s waste challenge.
He added that many provisions in Ghana’s sanitation policy in terms of building physical infrastructure have been constructed by Zoomlion, emphasising that the private sector has the capacity and there is no need to re-invent gains made to this effect.
The Minister of Sanitation and Water Resources, Joseph Kofi Adda, in his presentation, hinted at plans to deploy sanitation brigades to enforce sanitation laws and help shape attitudes towards good sanitation.
He alluded to the fact that environmental service providers have the capacity and there is the need for government to support them to consolidate their efforts to effectively manage waste.
He commended Zoomlion for its introduction of waste trucks, which has helped in managing waste and urged the company to continually provide effective service to help solve Ghana’s waste challenge despite being owed.
The Mayor of Accra, Mr. Mohammed Adjei Sowah, who also spoke as a panelist, revealed that the polluter payment system should work, so that those who create the waste pay a fee to enable effective collection.
Other stakeholders at the forum agreed that waste bin distribution, waste transfer stations, composting and recycling, landfill management and enforcing the sanitation laws and regulations is the way to go if Ghana wants to lift itself from the waste menace.
Source: Ghana/AccraFM.com
