Ministry Abandoned Waste Bins, Awarded $74m Contract For More

Joy News investigation has revealed that the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development did not need the one million waste bins it procured under a certificate of emergency.

Joy News has uncovered how a $74 million (GHS318 million) contract to the Jospong Group to supply one million waste bins and 900,000 bin liners has been inflated by at least $31.1 million (GHS130 million). A Joy News investigative tour of assemblies across the ten regions of Ghana reveals waste bins procured by the Local Government Ministry for distribution two years ago, are still dumped in the sun and are going waste.

Manasseh Azure Awuni spent the last nine months investigating what appears like a deliberate ploy to defraud the state through the district assemblies and now reports.

In November 2014, the Ministry awarded a contract for the supply of 155,000 waste bins for distribution in the district assemblies across the country. The Ministry took delivery of 100,500litter bins because the distribution centres at the assemblies were chocked.

While the Ministry was still struggling to distribute the 100,500 waste containers, the remaining 54,500 dustbins, sector Minister then, Collins Dawda, last year awarded a contract to five subsidiaries of the Jospong Group to supply one million waste bins and 900,000 packs of disposable bin liners.

The directive to supply the bins was given by the Office of the President. The single source procurement method was used.

A lot of the assemblies Joy News visited, still have not been able to distribute the bins.

At the Tema Metropolitan Assembly, there are still a number of waste bins yet to be distributed. In the Volta Region, there were still heaps of waste bins at the South Dayi, Biakoye, Krachi East, Krachi West and Krachi Nchumuru Districts as well as the Kpando Municipal Assembly. In Krachi Nchumuru, the waste bins have not been distributed and there is no place to store them so they have been dumped outside the police station.

At the Upper West Coordinating Council and the Northern Regional Coordinating Council in Tamale, heaps of the Waste bins are still yet to be taken by some of the assemblies, two years after the regions took delivery of their consignments.

The Wa Municipal Environmental Sanitation Health Officer, George Arthur, says there are about 500 of the bins that are yet to be distributed in the municipality but they are broken due to the long exposure to the harsh weather conditions. He said some of the residents were using the bins to store water.

He said the assembly was distributing the bins through Zoomlion, which charged the residents for the collection of wastes. Zoomlion took 70% of the revenue while the assembly took the rest. He said some residents used the bins to store water.

Some of the assemblies, especially those in the rural areas, say their districts have no need for them. Apart from the schools and the few government institutions, individuals prefer their own portable containers in which they can carry their refuse to the communal waste containers for dumping. In some of the districts, the residents who clamoured for the litter bins were using them to store water.

When the assemblies realised this they started perforating holes in them so the residents stopped taking them.

Another reason well-established households do not scramble for the government waste bins is that, some waste management companies, also distribute free waste bins to residents and corporate entities, especially in the urban areas.

In Tamale, for instance, Jam Waste Management Service, a small waste management company distributes free waste bins to residents who are able to pay for the collection of their waste.

At the Tema Metropolitan Assembly's waste management department, Zoomlion has hundreds of waste bins, which sources say, have been there for the past two years. The company has not been able to distribute all to its customers yet.

The critical question that remains to be answered is why the Ministry would award a contract to procure one million waste bins when it has not been able to distribute 100, 000 dustbins it procured for two years now.

–Myjoyonline