Accra Mayor calls for 24/7 operation of Kponge landfill site
Mr Mohammed Adjei Sowah, Chief Executive Officer of Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA), on Tuesday advocated 24-hour operations at the Kpone landfill, “If the sanitation problems facing the city of Accra are to be resolved”.
He said the current operations of the landfill site posed a challenge to the waste disposal efforts of the Assembly, adding that a 24-hour operation of the site will help solve about 50 per cent of the sanitation problems in the city.
Mr Sowah was speaking at a meeting of the Rotary Club of Accra-North, on the topic: “Beautification of Accra– The Challenges”.
He said although the Assembly had made some progress in the discharge of its three-pronged mandate of ensuring orderliness, public health and safety, and beautification in the city, there were still various challenges that hindered the achievement of these goals.
Among these challenges was the existence of only a landfill site.
He noted that Accra alone generated close to 3000 tonnes of solid waste per day, which posed waste collection challenges.
Currently, he noted, the city had to be cleaned during the night when most have left the area, which meant that the waste had to be collected and disposed during the night.
However, the operations of the landfill site meant that it had to wait till morning, when waste trucks would have to jostle with other road users to get to Kponge and then queue with others to dispose the refuse.
“Every time you see heaps of rubbish by the roadside, it means we have had problems with disposal the night before,” he said.
He added that government, in the long-term, should acquire land for the construction of the state’s own engineered landfill site to help with waste management, as the current one was a privately owned site.
Mr Sowah also noted that with proper decentralisation of the various state agencies and institutions in Ghana, the Assembly would be better positioned to deliver on its mandate.
“We should be fully decentralised. I am saying so because development is not parallel, it is supposed to be composite and compact, interrelated and complementary, so that when I am planning I know that I have the Ghana Police, for instance to back me,” he stated.
He explained that the Assemble spent about GHc64,000.00 per week on the decongestion programme in Accra, to pay people ‘Abaayei’ to police the streets.
He also took members of the club through the Assembly’s plan for the Greening of the city and showed artist renditions of the various parts of Accra.
He added that some companies and agencies had already committed to financing the greening of particular parts of the city, and was currently awaiting the approval of the Presidency for work to commence.
Source: GNA