Piles of refuse test agenda to make Accra cleanest city
The government’s quest to make Accra, the national capital, the cleanest city in Africa is being tested, as piles of refuse have engulfed some markets and communities in the city.
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Residents of some communities along the Accra-Nsawam railway line who are unable to access waste management services have also turned the railway buffer zones into refuse dumps.
The Makola Number 2, Agbogbloshie and Kaneshie markets and areas, including the Zongo Lane, Rawlings Park, Tudu, Graphic Road and Kwame Nkrumah Circle, are engulfed in heaps of waste.
At the Agbogbloshie Market, heaps of refuse were competing with traders for space, gutters were choked with garbage, and rats had a field day.
Waste management in the last 10 years has become a key part of campaign promises of political parties as the city authorities struggle to cope with the more than 2,000 tonnes of waste generated by residents daily.
Refuse politics
In the heat of the 2008 general election, the then candidate Professor J.E.A Mills promised to rid Accra of the filth that had engulfed it within 100 days.
Not many people were impressed with the result by April 2009 after he had become President with his critics accusing him of lacking a clear-cut policy on waste management.
In the case of President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, a similar promise he made during his first 100 days in office in April this year, said: “The commitment we are making and which I want you all to make with me is that by the time we end our four-year term, Accra is going to be the cleanest city in Africa.”
That promise appears to be under test when the Daily Graphic went round parts of the city last weekend.
Rot all over
At Agbogbloshie, a transformer meant to supply electricity to the area had been surrounded with refuse of all kinds.
“We don’t know where the refuse comes from. You come to the market in the morning and you see this all over the place,” Mr Mohammed Alhassan, a trader, told the Daily Graphic.
But another trader, Nana Yaa, said: “They collect it from the market and instead of sending it to the appropriate place; they leave it here in the night.”
Nearby, a storm drain that runs through a slum, popularly known as Galaway, had been turned into a refuse dump with an overpowering stench in the air.
Mr Emmanuel Adu, a shoe seller, said the heap of refuse was from residents in the slum community and traders from the market who threw plastic bags filled with refuse in the pile.
He also accused the Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA) of failing to collect the tonnes of silt that came with the expansion of the drain after the June 3, 2015 flood and fire disaster.
The situation was no different at the Makola Number 2 Market, Rawlings Park and the streets of Makola where traders sold their wares close to heaps of refuse despite the fact that refuse trucks were seen collecting refuse around 1.30 p.m last Saturday.
Ironically, at the Mallam Atta, Nima and Mamobi markets, where in the past refuse overflowed their bins, garbage had been neatly tucked into sacks and loaded into the garbage bin.
At Zongo Lane, residents alleged that they could go weeks without their refuse being collected while at the Selwyn Market Street, refuse had taken over part of the street.
The residents could not tell where the refuse had come from, but said it could be from households in the community.
On the Tesano to Achimota stretch of the road, some of the residents had turned the buffer zones close to the railway line into a refuse dump.
There were scavengers who kept the rubbish from spilling onto the railway line but for a fee. In the absence of the scavengers, the spillover was not a pleasant sight to behold.
Zoomlion reacts
Responding to the concerns about filth in some of the city’s markets, Mr Seth Adzraku, the Public Coordinator of Zoomlion, Accra Region, said the major issue confronting waste service providers was the inability of the government to pay them for their services.
He said Accra had been zoned and allotted to particular contractors to deliver waste collection services, but because they had not been paid, they were confronted with challenges.
He said while awaiting the payment for its services, Zoomlion secured funds from banks so that it could continue to collect waste in areas allotted to the company.
Mr Adzraku said because Zoomlion was a major player in the waste collection business, some members of the public erroneously thought the company was responsible for waste collection in the whole of Accra.
He said the company the company had used its resources to construct Zoompak transfer centres at Achimota and Kokomlemle to deal with the waste situation and appealed to the government to support the efforts of the service providers.
ESPA speaks
For its part, the Environmental Service Providers Association (ESPA) said the problem was multi-faceted. They included the high cost of using waste transfer stations at Teshie and Achimota and the failure of the AMA to financially support waste management companies to clear the filth in commercial centres.
The Executive Secretary of the association, Ms Ama A. Ofori-Antwi, told the Daily Graphic that “when it comes to the collection of commercial waste, it should, ideally, be handled with the support of the AMA, as those who come to generate the waste, do so and leave.”
More refuse, no payment
According to Ms Ofori-Antwi, the position of the market women was that since they were paying daily market levies, it was the responsibility of the assembly to cater for the waste generated in the various markets.
“What is hindering progress is the non-payment. The service providers are collecting a lot but very little payment is being done. The assemblies are supposed to support but that one is not coming. They are asking us to collect our own money; meanwhile, the market women are also saying they pay something to the AMA.
“They think with what they pay to the AMA, the assembly should take part to pay us. That is the number one challenge. Sanitation has not been identified as a major payment that has to be done by the market women,” she said.
Currently, market tolls are at GH¢1 daily for the traders and the Daily Graphic’s projection of 50,000 traders paying that amount for 24 days in a month brings the annual estimate to GH¢14.4 million-- an average of 1.2 million a month.
Situation
Lack of dump sites in Accra is a major challenge confronting waste management companies in th e metropolis.
Apart from the Kpone Engineering Landfill near Tema and Nsumia near Nsawam in the Eastern Region, which has been temporarily shut down, there are no other landfill sites in Accra.
The situation has made it difficult for waste management companies to operate efficiently, considering the long distances they have to travel daily to dump waste.
It takes a distance of 90km turnaround from Accra to the Kpone Engineering Landfill and a 75km turnaround to the Nsumia site.
The city’s three waste transfer stations at Achimota, Teshie and Kokomlemle are, therefore, expected to reduce the overall cost of operations of waste management contractors in the Greater Accra Region in terms of fuel and maintenance cost, as well as their turnaround time.
However, Ms Ofori-Antwi said it was not the case, as the facilities were expensive and increasing the cost of operations of the companies.
“Ideally, the service providers are supposed to be using the transfer points but because it is so expensive, most of them cannot afford it, so all of them travel out of the city.
“The transfers in the city and supposed to make their work very fast and even prolong the lifespan of their vehicles. The service would have been very efficient because you just pick it from the different parts of the city and send it to the station before the transfer station does some sorting before sending it to the disposal site, she stated.’’
Solutions
“When you send it to the transfer station, it is higher because you are paying about twice because the transfer station also has to transport it to the site. This is expensive for most of them, so only a handful are patronising it,” she said.
But to deal with the situation, the ESPA executive secretary called on the government to subsidise the cost of transferring waste to the transfer stations and settle the outstanding debts.
“For the outstanding bills, waste management is expensive, so as for that one till the government is ready to pay, we cannot get Accra clean,” she said.
She said waste collection was a social service that needed to be backed by state financing and, therefore, suggested avenues, including adding refuse collection levies to property tax, electricity, water or phone calls to raise the needed revenue needed to manage the tonnes of waste generated.
“If we do that, then there is some bulk money to pay for the waste. Our current system is not sustainable. Waste collectors would have to go to the household to collect the fees. Collect GH¢ 20 here, GH¢ 15 there, it doesn’t help anybody.
“As it is now, some houses pay, others don’t. They choose to pay what they like. The money they are paying is not a cost recovery rate,’’ she added.
While many are calling for the ban of tricycle operators also known as ‘kaya bola’ because of their alleged notoriety for throwing bags and sacks of refuse at unapproved places, Ms Ofori-Antwi said they were rather helping the system as they were able to enter neighbourhoods, especially slums, where the waste management companies struggled to access.
