Chiefs urged to play lead roles in sanitation management

By Prosper K. Kuorsoh, GNA
Wa, May 13, GNA - Zoomlion Ghana Limited, a private waste management company, has appealed to traditional authorities to play a lead role in addressing sanitation problems.

Addressing participants the launch of its 10th Anniversary Celebration, in Wa, Mr. Edmund Vidjah, the Acting Upper West Regional Manager of Zoomlion, said the Company believed that the influence wielded by traditional authorities could be utilised in ensuring the success of communal exercises, including that of the National Sanitation Day.

He said since Zoomlion started its operations, it had worked with passion to rid many communities of filth, foster good sanitation practices, and supported governments to achieve a high standard of sanitation nationwide.

Mr. Vidjah said with a modest but ambitious beginning, the Company had been able to create a good number of jobs through the Public, Private Partnership (PPP) concept spearheaded by the Government.

'Currently, we are managing a workforce of 85,000 project staff across the country and about 2,631 in the Upper West Region, and we have also extended our services beyond the shores of Ghana to countries like Angola, Equatorial Guinea, Zambia, Sierra Leone, Togo and Liberia,' he said.

Mr. Vidjah said a few years ago, Waste Management was very unattractive so people who were associated with it were often stigmatised.

However, he said, today the story was different as people of the highest academic and social statuses were glad to be related to the field.

'This has been driven by our passion and deep love for what we do and the people we serve,' he said.

He said the company had chalked many successes, including the establishment of two plastic recycling plants for the production of waste bins and bin liners and the successful implementation of door-to-door waste collection across the 10 regions.

Others are a Solid Waste Transfer Station at Teshie, the Accra Compost and Recycling Plant, the Mudor and Lavender Hill Faecal Waste Treatment Facilities in Accra, and the Kumasi Environmental Park Project.

Mr. Vidjah said the Company's gallant and committed staff in the region had also not relented in its core mandate to successfully implement programmes like the Waste and Sanitation Model of the Youth Enterprises Agency (YEA), Communal Waste Collection and Disposal, Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies' (MMDAs) disinfestations exercise and the Sanitation Guards Programme.

All these, he said, contributed to the Region being touted as one of the cleanest regions in the country by the Minister of Local Government and Rural Development, Alhaji Collins Dauda during the Region's turn for the National Sanitation Day Exercise.

Mr. Vidjah, however, expressed dissatisfaction about the general attitude of people towards sanitation.

The lack of adequate infrastructure and equipment to deal with the issues were also challenging, he said.

Dr. Musheibu Mohammed Alfa, the Deputy Upper West Regional Minister, said Zoomlion since its establishment in 2006, shared the vision of the Government to effectively manage the several tonnes of waste that were generated every day nationwide.

He urged the public to develop the consciousness to keep the environment clean by actively participating in the clean-up exercises to avert the outbreak of preventable sanitation-related diseases.

GNA