Bring sanity into solid waste management

For some weeks now, solid waste contractors in the Accra and the Tema metropolises have been struggling to carry out the task of managing the tonnes of garbage generated in Accra and Tema.

Accra alone is said to generate 2,500 tonnes of waste daily and recent complaints by some residents of Accra and Tema that their refuse is not picked up early enough give an indication that all is not well with our refuse collection. 

Although the Environmental Service Providers Association (ESPA) attributes its inability to collect all the solid waste to the non-payment of arrears owed them, the government has made it clear that it does not owe the association and that the assemblies responsible for sanitation in their jurisdictions should fix the problem, if any.

One of the causes of the sanitation problems confronting the country is the non-availability of suitable dumpsites for the tonnes of rubbish generated daily.

The importance of a landfill site in any waste management regime cannot be over-emphasised, as the least roadblock to accessing such a facility results almost immediately in the piling up of refuse.

Today, the engineered Kpone Landfill Site is under pressure. The facility, built for only solid waste generated in and around that part of the Greater Accra Region, has become the final destination for volumes of refuse from all over Greater Accra. 

Currently, depending on location, refuse trucks travel between 90 and 100 kilometres just to dump a truckload of waste. With the heavy vehicular congestion on the Accra-Tema Motorway, the number of trips to the landfill site is reduced, leading to the piling up of refuse in residential areas.

With the polluter-pay principle introduced in 2010, the assemblies have virtually abandoned all their obligations for solid waste management and financing waste management has now become the sole responsibility of the ESPA members, who are now required to register, provide litter bins and collect monthly approved fees from households.

This arrangement and the inability of the refuse companies to lift the residential refuse in good time have, to a large extent, contributed to the prevailing insanitary conditions in the city, giving rise to the activities of what is known in local parlance as 'Kaya boola'.

Some of the 'Kaya boola', mostly young men who use tricycles to collect household rubbish, dump the waste indiscriminately when the inadequate central containers are full. 

With the rainy season setting in, the Daily Graphic calls on the assemblies to make solid waste management a priority before an epidemic hits the city.

The ESPA has indicated that it will need at least two transfer stations to bring some efficiency into solid waste management in the city.

Perhaps it is time the ESPA and the assemblies came together and embarked on a campaign for the segregation of waste by households to make the handling of such waste much easier.