Accra has no final dump sites, says AMA

The Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA) says currently there are no final dump sites in Accra to manage waste.

Speaking to Asaase Radio, Solomon Noi-Adzeman Nuetey, director for waste management at the AMA, said in the past there were many unauthorised dump sites in Accra that were not well managed and were causing health problems for residents in these areas.

“The challenge for us as a city authority is that hitherto we were having unauthorised dumpsites – Oblogo and Mallam,” he said. “These were unfriendly to the environment in which they were located because they were churning out a lot of methane gases and then they were polluting the environment. So we had no choice than to decommission them.

“So currently in the Accra metropolis, we do not have any place for the final disposal of waste and so we are compelled to transport our waste right from the city centre to Nsumia and Nsawam in the Eastern Region – and that also is not an engineered landfill site, so the problem persists,” Nuetey said. 

Contaminated water, polluted land

He added: “Sixteen per cent of total municipal solid waste is made up of plastics. So you can imagine 16% of 3,000 metric tonnes; that is the volume we are talking about.

“… I want you to picture waste management like a conveyer belt in a factory where daily we load almost 3,000 metric tonnes of municipal solid waste on to the conveyer belt. Once something happens to the process and the conveyer belt stops, that is the backlog we always see. And until we find a sustainable and lasting solution to the problem of final disposal sites, this will always be the problem we are going to see.”

Less than 40% of urban residents are served with solid waste collection services and less than 30% by an acceptable household toilet facility, according to the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development national report for Ghana. 

The report says the methods historically applied to dealing with waste have been unsuccessful, and the resulting contamination of water and land has led to growing concern over the absence of an integrated approach to waste management in Ghana.

Formal training

But Noi-Adzeman Nuetey said the city authorities are working to formalise the waste collection sector, which has hitherto been largely informal.

“What we need to do is to give these guys [informal waste management operators] some stimulus packages. So … if the government can come to their aid ––

“Currently what they are doing [leaves them] limited in scope. But once they are given financial assistance they will be able to upscale whatever technologies they are using to be able to process a lot more waste than they are currently doing. 

“We have currently registered over 6,000 informal sector waste management operators. We have the informal sector players in different forms – those using the tricycle, those that use the pushcarts and then the ‘kaya borla’.

“These are the groups we want to bring together and train them in occupational health and safety. Then, with time, we will help them to formalise into the mainstream waste management.

“Once this is done, we will allocate them areas to be able to work on and then give them rules and regulations so that they don’t veer off,” he said.

Plastic waste menace

It is estimated that there are over 40 plastic-producing industries in the country, creating over 30,000 metric tonnes per annum of assorted plastic products. In addition, about 12,000 metric tonnes of finished plastic products are imported annually into the country.

These compound the plastic waste problem in Ghana. Roughly 20-30% of this plastic ends up as waste in the streets.

With very few recycling facilities in the country, the challenge of post-consumer plastic waste has become a prime issue of concern.

Noi-Adzeman Nuetey adds: “The industries that serve as offtakers can shred [solid waste] into pellets, but unfortunately we do not have a factory in the country to take these pellets and process them into new products. So, most of the time, they are shipped and exported outside the country for processing.”

* Asaase Radio 99.5 – tune in or log on to broadcasts online.
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