By Edmund Smith-Asante, ACCRA
 |
| Some National Service personnel at the launch |
Two thousand National Service
persons have been assigned to metropolitan, municipal and district assemblies
across the country in a newly introduced Urban Sanitation Module.
The module is a joint collaboration
among the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development (MLGRD), the
National Waste Bin Distribution Programme (NaWaBin), Melchia Investments Ghana
Limited (MIGL) and the National Service Scheme (NSS).
Launching the module in Accra
Thursday, the Executive Director of the NSS, Dr Michael Kpessa-Whyte, said the
decision of the National Service Secretariat to join the sanitation module was
informed by a number of factors, including President John Mahama’s announcement
last year of the distribution of free waste bins to all households by the MLGRD
and other partners.
He also mentioned the National Sanitation
Day and the outbreak of cholera which culminated in the massive clearing of
waste that has been championed by the president and his vice as other
motivating factors for the sanitation module.
“As an institution that essentially
deploys young people coming out of our tertiary institutions, we thought that
if the leaders of this country themselves are setting such wonderful examples,
it is important that we take proactive steps to prevent the situation that sent
them out from occurring,” he added.
Significance of module
The Chairman of the Board of
Directors of MIGL, Capt. F.B Amoh-Twum (retd), said the company offered
to collaborate with the NSS on the module because it believed that introducing
improved logistics into the waste management sector with IT solutions support
would significantly help to deal with the challenges identified.
It would also “reduce the persistent
littering of our environment, reduce the creation of refuse heaps by the
roadside and prevent the perennial flooding that results from garbage choking
our drains during rainfall, and reduce the breeding of houseflies,” he stated.
In a statement delivered on his
behalf, the President of the Environmental Service Providers Association
(ESPA), Mr Joseph Siaw Agyepong, said: “We at ESPA are very excited about this
new innovation which will go a long way to address some of our challenges which
include inadequate client data, poor revenue collection, poor route planning,
inefficient logistics deployment and revenue leakages.”
The Chief Executive of the La
Nkwantanang-Madina Municipal Assembly, Mr Franklin Anku, indicated that the
module would also capture information on structures and household composition,
as well as Global Positioning System (GPS) locations of all structures, to
enable effective planning in all sectors of the economy.
This
story was first published by the Daily
Graphic on September 4, 2015
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