Israeli Envoy commends Ghana’s oil waste management system
Israeli Ambassador to Ghana Ami Mehl, has commended the country’s management of the waste associated with offshore oil and gas operations since the inception of the industry.
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Speaking after a tour of the integrated waste transfer station of Zeal Environmental Technologies Limited (ZETL), an indigenous industrial waste management company, at Nyankrom in the Shama District the ambassador said a safe environment was critical to man’s survival.
He said his visit to the plant was to learn at first-hand the operations of the company and explore possibilities for future cooperation in waste management with Israeli expertise.
Waste from the offshore operations, he said, must not be seen as any ordinary waste and that steps needed to be taken to draw up elaborate plans to deal with it.
He commended ZETL for repackaging waste for reuse as raw materials.
“The garbage brought to the shore to be reused as raw materials for others is very commendable,” he noted.
Cooperation not support
Israel, he said, was not just seeking to lend a hand of support to ZETL but also seeking cooperation in the areas that would be mutually beneficial to both parties.
Those areas, he said, included environment, agriculture, energy, cyber security and any others that the two countries had expertise in.
The operations of ZETL, he said, were critical to sustainable management to ensure that in the exploration of the oil and gas resource, Ghana averted any environmental problem by putting in place a facility to contain it
Israeli-Ghana Chamber
To enhance trade between the two countries, Ambassador Mehl said, an Israel-Ghana Chamber had been established to promote businesses on both sides.
The chamber would put together experts operating in the areas of agriculture, energy, water, mining and others to travel to and from both countries to discuss areas of mutual benefit to both countries.
“The focus now is to identify those areas where we could cooperate and benefit. We want to see bilateral trade between Ghana and Israel increasing from the current $40m to more than $200m by 2017,” he said.
Worthy partners
For his part, the General Manager of Zeal Environmental Technologies, Mr Winfred Bentum Johnson, noted that Israel, with its technological advancement, was one of the worthy partners that the company would like to cooperate with.
The company, he said, had already identified an Israeli firm locally and would explore how the two companies could cooperate for their mutual benefit.
