Zoomlion, MLGRD Inaugurate 700 Trucks

Mr Samuel Ofosu-Ampofo - Minister of Local Government and Rural Development inspecting some of the sanitation trucks.

Zoomlion Ghana Limited, a waste management organisation, in conjunction with the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development, yesterday unveiled 700 refuse trucks and other equipment for distribution to metropolitan, municipal and district assemblies (MMDAs) and private waste management contractors throughout the country.

This is to help find a lasting solution to the nation’s sanitation problems.

Unveiling the trucks at a ceremony in Accra, the Minister of Local Government and Rural Development, Mr Samuel Ofosu-Ampofo, said the government had secured a $11-million grant from the Exim Bank for the procurement of waste management equipment for distribution to MMDAs and private waste companies in the country.

He said the new trucks would provide additional logistical support to the MMDAs in order to enhance their capacities to deliver higher quality waste management services in their respective areas.

Mr Ofosu-Ampofo said the move would also boost waste management practices at the domestic or household levels with the distribution of up to one million bins nation-wide and incorporate unorthodox waste pre-collectors (truck pushers) into mainstream operations by helping them to acquire affordable and appropriate waste collection equipment on very flexible terms.

He said there was no denying the fact that the injection of enormous amounts of human, logistical, financial and technological resources into waste management operations in the country in the last five years had really helped in changing the face of waste management significantly.

He said as part of efforts to support the government to rid the country of filth, Zoomlion was collaborating with the ministry to inject more logistical resources into Zoomlion’s operations by way of the expansion of its fleet of trucks and other machinery in order for it to beef up the operational capacities of not only the MMDAs but also all the other players in the waste and environmental sanitation industry, including waste management contractors and individuals engaged in any form of waste collection, hence the unveiling of the 700 trucks and other equipment.

The minister said according to Ghana’s environmental sanitation policy revised in 2010, waste management in its various forms was to be carried out by the waste management departments within the various metropolitan, municipal and district assemblies as well as the district environment health directorates.

This, he said, was to be done either directly or indirectly where the services of able private management contractors were engaged to deliver the service satisfactorily.

He said the policy further recommended that up to 80 per cent of waste management services within the assemblies should be outsourced to private sector players through various forms of arrangement such as leases, franchises and contracts with the assemblies retaining the remaining 20 per cent.

He said the arrangement presupposed that there should be very smooth co-ordination and co-operation between the partners in the current agreement in order to achieve the set goals for environmental sanitation.

Mr Ofosu-Ampofo said also crucial to the success of the environmental sanitation efforts was the acquisition of adequate logistical

resources that would ensure that operators were able to deliver to expectation, adding that the picture the country had in terms of availability of adequate resources had not been the best as both the government and private sector players were grappling with problems of getting adequate supply of equipment for the country’s waste management needs.

In a speech read on his behalf, the Chief Executive Officer of Zoomlion, Mr Joseph Siaw Agyepong, extended his profound appreciation to the government for the trust and confidence it had reposed in Zoomlion as a worthy partner in its efforts at solving the country’s environmental and economic challenges.

He said there was no gainsaying the fact that a lot of resources, efforts and attention had gone into fighting the country’s waste and environmental sanitation problems in recent years, especially with the inception of the private public partnership arrangement for the management of waste and sanitation as laid out by the revised Ghana Environmental Sanitation Policy 2010.

He said the time had come for all stakeholders in the sanitation sector, whether as policy makers, researchers and operators, to face the problems head-on and strive to pull the nation out of the doldrums for better life and accelerated development.