Exercise to confiscate unregistered tricycles underway in Accra
The Environmental Services Providers Association (ESPA), in collaboration with the Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA) and with the assistance of the police, is carrying out an exercise to arrest unregistered tricycle operators who are engaged in refuse collection.
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So far, over 50 tricycles have been impounded in the exercise which began about three weeks ago and has been carried out in various areas in Accra.
The arrested operators who are first-time offenders would be cautioned and made to sign an undertaking that they would not engage in illegal waste collection, but if they are arrested again, their tricycles would be impounded.
In an interview, a Project Officer of ESPA, Mr Raymond Ayayee, said the exercise, which would be carried out thrice every month, was aimed at sanitising the collection and management of waste across the country.
“To do waste collection, you must go through a process. The ESPA’s concept is to clean the city and help those collectors work with competence,” he said.
Reason for exercise
Mr Ayayee said apart from streamlining waste management, the decision to embark on the exercise was informed by the dumping of waste at unauthorised places such as the roadside, in drains and at people’s backyards by the illegal waste collectors so that they could shorten their round trip to make more money.
He indicated that most of the illegal tricycle operators were also engaged in the distribution of sachet water and wanted to cash in on waste collection, by operating their tricycles in less accessible areas.
However, Mr Ayayee said there was no area in Accra that was not covered by one of the nine main waste contractors who are members of the association.
He explained that by engaging in waste collection in such areas, the tricycle operators were trespassing on areas assigned those companies and this was impacting negatively on their work.
ESPA Tricycle Scheme
The ESPA project officer said it was to deal with the difficulty in the collection of waste in inaccessible areas that the association had introduced the ESPA Tricycle Scheme to assist the waste management companies with tricycles they could use in the difficult-to-reach operational areas.
He said so far, three of the waste companies had enrolled in the new scheme which involves the branding and coding of about 200 tricycles with the name of the companies.
Mr Ayayee, therefore, urged the public to desist from engaging the services of individual waste collectors whose tricycles were not branded with the waste company’s name and logo or coded.
He advised communities that experienced challenges in the timely collection of their waste to identify the waste contractor as signed to work in their area and report same to the AMA and ESPA to have their concerns addressed.