Ashaiman moves to improve sanitation
A change agenda introduced by the Ashaiman Municipal Assembly (ASHMA) to tackle waste management is paying off.
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“We are making progress, I can say there is marked improvement in sanitation but there is still more work to do and we will push hard until we get there,” the Municipal Chief Executive (MCE), Mr Albert Okyere, told the Daily Graphic yesterday.
A sprawling municipality carved out of the Tema Metropolitan Assembly (TMA), Ashaiman is a heterogenous community with a population of about 300,000.
One of the major challenges confronting the municipality is poor sanitation. Residents litter the roads and other open places with all manner of waste, including plastics, while in other places human waste remains an eyesore.
The insanitary condition is seen as a threat to human lives.
The congestion, coupled with the attitude of sections of the residents, has gone to compound the sanitation challenge. Some 150 tonnes of solid waste is generated in Ashaiman every day but about 80 per cent is collected, with the remainder finding its way into unauthorised places.
Systematic interventions by the assembly and its partners, the MCE said, had brought some level of hope to the municipality.
The interventions include engagement with waste collection companies to upscale their delivery, as well as mass education on sanitation.
GAMA project
The Greater Accra Metropolitan Area (GAMA) Sanitation and Water project, which Ashaiman is benefiting from, has played in to the success story.
Twenty institutions in the municipality are benefiting from the GAMA project in the form of institutional toilets while drainage systems are under construction at Tulaku and Middle East.
A number of households are also being provided with toilets under the project to address open defecation.
There is also the Urban Sanitation Project, funded by the United Nations Children’s Fund, which aims at improving water, sanitation and hygiene services and practices.
Private collectors The municipal assembly had engaged five private waste collection companies that collect and dispose of waste at the Kpone landfill site.
Four of the service providers are engaged in household collection which is paid for by residents while the other company, Zoomlion Ghana Limited, takes waste from sanitary sites, including the markets and lorry station.
But, the municipal environmental health officer, Mr Patrick Tsigbey, is not happy with the general delivery of the service providers.
While admitting that waste collection comes with associated challenges, he stated that it was disturbing that the providers were not performing to the standard they started with “and as far as I am aware, the assembly does not owe them.”
Another challenge facing waste management is the activities of tricycle operators known as Jonkey Boys.
“Often, they take the waste and drop them on the ceremonial streets,” Mr Tsigbey said.
Every week, he said, the major street of Ashaiman is cleaned twice. The road is where most of the waste is dropped.
Kpone Landfill
Another major challenge in the waste management agenda is the problem with the Kpone landfill site.
According to the environmental health officer, the landfill, where Ashaiman municipality dumps its final waste, is under pressure and constant threat.
The management of the site has not been the best and looking at the thousands of tonnes of waste dumped there from Tema, Accra and Ashaiman, the future does not look good.
“The way I look at it, it can’t take us for more than four years,” Mr Tsibgey said.
According to him, what has become a major headache for the assembly is the difficulty in securing land to establish a new landfill site.
Consequently, the assembly is exploring partnerships to undertake waste-to-energy initiatives.
Some investors have brought proposals and the assembly is looking at them.
Fortunately for the ASHMA, Mr Tsigbey stated, the MCE is a man who has the can-do spirit and is determined to take the assembly’s sanitation efforts to another level.
“He occasionally goes round to see how sanitation staff are performing and also how the people are embracing the change agenda,” he said.
