By Edmund Smith-Asante, ACCRA
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| The Zoompak waste transfer station |
Until Zoomlion came on the scene in
2006, waste management services and those who engaged in it were regarded
with scorn as if they were engaged in contagious activity.
Not only are sanitary workers now
well clad in uniforms, they are also equipped with all manner of tools that
they need for their work.
In an attempt to follow the exploits
of Zoomlion Ghana Limited to identify positive areas for collaboration, the
Israeli Ambassador to Ghana, Mr Ami Mehl, in the company of his wife and
embassy staff, recently paid a familiarisation tour of some companies and
projects being undertaken by the Zoomlion Group of Companies.
These included the Mudor faecal
treatment plant, which is still under construction, the Zoompak Transfer
Station at Teshie, which also has the first-ever medical waste treatment plant
in Ghana, and the Yeeco Plastics Company in Tema.
Others were a vehicle assembly
plant, Universal Plastic Products and Recycling Limited (UPPR) at Borteyman, J.
A. Plant Pool Ghana Limited at Dzorwulu and the Accra Compost and Recycling
Plant at Adjen Kotoku.
Mudor Faecal Plant
At the Mudor Faecal Plant, the
project manager, Mrs Florence Cobbold, said Sewage Systems Ghana Limited was
rehabilitating the sewage system built for Accra in the year 2000 by Taysec
Construction Company that had broken down after three years.
As a result of that, “the raw sewage
from the business district of Accra is pumped here and it flows directly into
the sea without treatment,” she said.
She said when rehabilitation works
were completed by January 2016; the plant would be able to treat liquid waste
into effluent that would meet Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) standards
before discharging into the sea.
Mrs Cobbold said another treatment
plant for Nsawam and surrounding areas was being put up at Adjen Kotoku, which
would treat about 600m3 of waste a day from 60 cesspit emptiers when completed
in about nine months.
Zoompak Transfer Station
The Zoompak transfer station, which
was launched in June by the Vice-President, Mr Kwesi Bekoe Amissah- Arthur,
manages up to 1,500 tonnes of waste on a daily basis.
The Chief Operating Officer (COO) of
the Zoomlion Group of Companies, Mr Mohkles Bustami, said the station saved a
lot of fuel and other costs and freed the highways when waste trucks made the
shorter journey to the station instead of going all the way to the dumpsite or
landfills to dump the garbage.
He said the station currently
serviced three private companies and received about 100 trucks daily as well as
individuals who dumped their waste there for free. There is also a
treatment facility solely for medical waste from health facilities.
Yeeco Plastics, Universal Plastic
Products and Recycling Limited
Yeeco Plastics is a company that
manufactures plastic carrier bags out of recycled waste as well as plastics for
food packaging and waste-bin liners. Universal Plastic Products and Recycling
Limited (UPPR), on the other hand, recycles plastic waste from which it
manufactures waste bins.
Vehicle Assembly Plant, J. A. Plant
Pool Ghana Limited
The vehicle assembly plant, which
shares premises with UPPR, assembles trucks, hydraulic dump tricycles and
motorcycles, among others, for the Ghanaian market and for export. J. A. Plant
Pool, on the other hand, has bonded warehouses that stock bus coaches and earth
moving equipment for the construction sector. It also has in stock spare parts
for the vehicles in its warehouses.
Accra Compost and Recycling Plant
The Accra Compost Plant is a public
private partnership project with the government. It is a fully automated
project which cost US$30 million, has a central operation centre and produces
compost from 500 to 600 tons of waste from Accra for the farming community on a
daily basis.
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| The Accra Compost Plant is a perfect example of a successful PPP project |
Dr Richard Amponsah, the Managing
Director of the plant, said the major problem the plant faced was the inability
of the Ghanaian public to sort out the waste that was brought there.
Ghana’s MDG achievements
Meanwhile, according to the 2010
Population and Housing Census (PHC) report on the Millennium Development Goals
(MDGs) in Ghana, published by the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) in July,
2013, the MDG target 7B of halving the proportion of people without access to
safe drinking water has been achieved ahead of time. Only 15 per cent of the
sanitation target of 54 per cent, has, however, been achieved.
The report suggests that the slow
progress in improving environmental sanitation and the continued loss of forest
cover remains a big challenge. It states that the cost of environmental
degradation (lands, forest, fisheries) was pegged at about 10 per cent of GDP
as of 2010.
It also maintains that although the
access to improved sanitation has been increasing over the years, Ghana is
unlikely to achieve the MDG target for sanitation and calls for efforts to
quicken the pace of policy implementation rolled out to improve the situation.
The report calls for the urgent need
to effect attitudinal and behavioural change in the public through extensive
educational and awareness-creation programmes. Ghana’s pervasive insanitary
conditions has resulted in the outbreak of sanitation-related diseases that
have claimed human lives such as cholera in the past years.
Sanitation-related diseases
In 2014 cholera claimed 128 lives in
Ghana and reported cases hit 16,527, the worst in 30 years. As a result of
magnitude of the outbreak, the government instituted several measures including
the “Sword and Shield” strategy, the adoption of a 100-day contingency plan and
the clearing of mountains of filth, some as old as six years.
It is also the insanitary conditions
that culminated in the introduction of the National Sanitation Day (NSD), which
was kick started by President John Mahama at Sogakope, Vice-President Paa Kwesi
Amissah-Arthur in Accra and the Asantehene, Otumfuo Osei Tutu II in Kumasi, on
November 1, 2014 for citizens to clean their surroundings every first Saturday
of the month. The NSD, which is led by the Ministry of Local Government and
Rural development (MLGRD), completed a monthly regional tour in September
2015.
Nonetheless, while some of the MDG
targets may be missed, it is quite certain that the dual benefits of improving
sanitation coverage in the country and offering employment to many unemployed
youth through the companies belonging to the Zoomlion Group of Companies would
change the story under the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) set to roll out
after the MDGs.
This story was first published by the Daily Graphic on September 17, 2015
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