Accra, July 31, 2018//-While Ghana’s economy is on robust growth trajectory, its 254 Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs) are struggling to contain tonnes of waste they generate daily in the West African country.
This is due to the fact that Ghana’s burgeoning population is producing far more waste than its obsolete and limited infrastructure can contain.
Cities disgorge more tonnes of waste
Ghana’s sprawling cities namely Accra, Tema, Kumasi, Sekondi-Takoradi and Tamale disgorge more than 7,000 metric tonnes of waste a day.
Accra, the nation’s capital and its host region-the Greater Accra with a population of about four million generates about 2,200 tonnes of solid waste every day, and out of this only 1800 tonnes are collected daily, leaving a deficit of 400 tonnes uncollected.
According to the Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA) solid waste generated in Accra alone comprises 65 percent organic, 3 percent paper, 3.5 percent plastic, 3.6 percent glass, 2.5 percent metal, 1.7 percent textile, 17.1 percent of inert metals and 1.2 percent being residue of other waste materials.
All these waste are expected to be cleared by the overburdened MMDAs but they end up collecting a fraction which creates health hazards for the inhabitants, and tourists.
Breeding grounds for mosquitoes
Sadly, according to Ghana Health Service (GHS), cases of malaria are estimated at over eight million annually, and more than 1,000 of these result in death.
Yet, the breeding grounds for anopheles mosquito, the insect that transmits the deadly disease, is voluntarily prepared by many of its victims day after day.
When empty plastic bags and bottles are carelessly disposed in the streets, they are washed into the gutters where they clog the drainage and cause the water to remain stagnant, forming the perfect breeding place for the anopheles mosquito to complete its life-cycle and attack its unsuspecting “breeders”, it added.
Haunted by dirt
The numerous campaigns about cleanliness, in Accra and many other cities in Ghana seem to have little or no effect.
The gutters are filled with aggregates of sand, plastic bottles, polythene materials and lush green grass such that the road becomes the only possible path for rain water.
Floods
Ghana has to deal with floods every year during the rainy season. These floods according to experts are caused by the indiscriminate building of houses on waterways, poor urban planning, chocked gutters , among others.
It is important to acknowledge that a sizable number of Accra’s residents live in low-income, densely populated communities, and sea areas, with inadequate infrastructure and services.
So residents in these communities dump their waste into open spaces, drains and rivers, lagoons which contribute to the perennial flooding in the rainy season. Occasionally, these floods claim human lives and destroy several property worth thousands of dollars.
For instance, in the infamous 3rd June disaster in 2015, over 200 people lost when a GOIL fuel station at the Kwame Nkrumah Interchange got burnt, while several property including vehicles, shops and residential facilities worth millions of dollars were destroyed.
Cholera rising
Cholera continues to be one of the fastest killer diseases which are highly preventable. It is not only a killer, it is also a drain on public purse and disgraceful to a country’s image.
In 2014, the cholera pandemic that hit the nation in June and some 9000 cases were reported with over 85 deaths in some 46 districts in the country, according to the GHS.
The story has not been different over the years. In the first quarter of 2012 alone, Accra recorded 826 cases of cholera with 17 confirmed deaths. Even though, this was an improvement over 2011’s figures of 3,000 cases and 24 deaths within the same period, the situation still leaves much to be desired.
Cholera remains a global threat and is one of the key indicators of social development. While the disease no longer poses a threat to countries with minimum standards of hygiene, it remains a challenge to countries where access to safe drinking water and adequate sanitation cannot be guaranteed.
Open defecation
Ghana recently ranked second after Sudan in Africa for open defecation, with five million Ghanaians not having access to any toilet facility.
This implies that the West African second largest economy is performing poorly with sanitation coverage of only 15 percent, making the practice of open defecation a key sanitation challenge because people do not have access to key basic facilities.
David Duncan, Chief Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) Officer at the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), disclosed this to African Eye Report in Accra.
The Open Defecation alone costs Ghana $79 million per year, $215 million is lost each year due to premature death from poor water, sanitation and hygiene, according to the data from the Environmental Health and Sanitation Directorate (EHSD) of the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development (MLGRD).
Dirty beaches
Despite Ghana`s ranking as third in hotel development in sub-Saharan Africa in 2013, with more than 1, 400 hotel rooms under development, the country`s beaches face serious sanitation problems and environmental degradation.
The state of sanitation of many of the country`s beaches is so appalling that they are not attractive to tourists. The lukewarm attitude towards sanitation at the beaches was captured vividly by the Ghanaian media reports.
A cursory look at the country’s beaches portrays reprehensible squalor. Some people who live near the beaches use them as defecation grounds and for dumping garbage. This causes poor sanitation on the beaches, leading to massive environmental pollution. This affects the overall effectiveness of harnessing the coast for ecotourism.
Sea waves also bring mountainous heaps of plastic waste and debris in the form of decomposing carcass, discarded fabrics, logs and unwanted electronic parts. Thus the beaches are replete with repugnant scents that make it impossible for visitors to enjoy quietude and fresh breeze.
These appalling spectacles cast a slur on the country`s lower middle income status and impede efforts aimed at promoting public health, ensuring environmental sustainability and eventually catapulting the country to an upper middle income status, according to Yaw Owusu, an environmentalist.
Nevertheless, the government, through the coastal districts in partnership with Zoomlion Ghana Limited, is trying to make some beaches clean, he noted.
Apart from mosquitoes and stench, the resultant humus soil formed by the combo of stagnant water, refuse and sand in the drainages provide a viable environment for grass to grow.
In the end, these help to carve nice niches not only for insects, but also bigger vermin like cockroaches, rats and mice right in the middle of the cities especially Accra, and Kumasi. These cities thus put at the risk of killer diseases ranging from cholera, lassa fever to diarrhoea.
While figures from the Environmental Health and Sanitation Directorate (EHSD) of the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development (MLGRD) have revealed that this poor sanitation costs Ghana $290 million each year representing 1.6 per cent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
If simple precautions ─ like making sure water is never retained in the gutters ─ were taken, maybe the $290 million would have been channeled into other areas in the health sector which would translate into real sustainable development for the country.
Carelessness and poverty
Ironically, many inhabitants of the major cities, in particular, agree that they are also guilty in some ways for the problem of litter constituting an eyesore and a hazard on the streets.
The Environmental Service Providers Association (ESPA) which is responsible for effective waste management has received many commendations for doing their utmost best in curbing the menace presented by poor waste management.
However, one problem militating against ESPA’s work is the fact that some people are either unable or unwilling to pay the fees associated with the services. Hence they dispose their wastes at inappropriate places.
“It is people who don’t want to pay the waste disposal charges that throw dirt in the gutters and water ways,” Kwame Opoku, a mobile phones owner told African Eye Report at the Kwame Nkrumah Circle in Accra.
True, like Mr Opoku asserts, there are people “who do not want to pay” the charges. Nevertheless some whose income fall far below the poverty line really have the desire to support the government’s arrangement, but how can they do it when they hardly can afford to feed and clothe themselves? Poverty too is a factor, he argued.
Cashing in on the waste
For instance, Abu Razak is one of thousands of unofficial waste-pickers who see this as an opportunity to make some cash.
Half-immersed in a large bin outside a smart housing compound in the capital, Accra, he pulls out variety of cans, including water bottles and empty jam jars, and stuffs them into his tricycle. You can click for more info about various types of bins.
He then sells his daily haul for 20 Ghana cedis (about $5). “I take the rubbish, give it to a middleman and he sells it for much more,” he said while flipping through a discarded women’s magazine.
“The waste disposal truck demands a payment of over GH¢100 ( $23) per quarter for our compound,” Maame Abena, a resident of East Legon, a suburb of Accra said. “We divide the bill amongst the residents of the compound, but some people find it hard to pay.”
While Abena and his fellow compound residents are always able to cover for some of their neighbours’ inadequacy in paying the bills, elsewhere such neighbours are left to find a way to dispose their refuse, by themselves.
On the larger scale, the overburdened MMDAs have outsourced waste management in their various communities to members of the ESPA and the Plastic Waste Collectors Association of Ghana (PWCAG) but the problem of funding is affecting their operations.
Moreover, Ghana is not the only country finding it hard to manage its waste. Africa’s urban population currently stands at 472 million people, according to World Bank’s latest report titled-Africa’s Cities: Opening Doors to the World.
As cities grow in size, another 187 million people will be added to urban areas by 2025. In fact, Africa’s urban population will double over the next 25 years, reaching 1 billion people by 2040, it added. This will further stretch infrastructure especially waste management ones in Ghana and other African countries.
Measures to address the menace
Despite all the confluence of efforts, Ghana simply has not found “above-average solution” to waste management, whether it is solid, liquid, hazardous or even radioactive materials.
And in recognition that poor sanitation is generally an attitudinal problem, measures have been taken by the authorities from time-to-time to draw public attention to the malady, but to no avail.
The many years of numerous bye-laws instituted by the MMDAs and clean-up campaigns across Ghana have not yielded the desire results.
At the national level, Ghana’s President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo created the country’s first Ministry of Sanitation and Water Resources as part of a pledge to make Accra the cleanest city in Africa.
He personally launched the National Sanitation Campaign with a strong call on Ghanaians to change their attitude towards sanitation management in the country.
Key points in the historic National Sanitation Campaign include: establishment of the National Sanitation Authority; setting up of National Sanitation Fund, one house, one toilet policy; and the setting up of a special court to try sanitation offences.
At the private sector level, the Environmental Service Providers Association and the Plastic Waste Collectors Association of Ghana and other stakeholders have both advocated a number of measures including the polluter pays principle to stem the poor environmental management situation in which Ghanaians find themselves.
By Masahudu Ankiilu Kunateh, African Eye Report
Email: mk68008@gmail.com
