TWIN-CITY'S WASTE MANAGEMENT WOES DEEPEN (PAGE 24)

The door to door collection of solid waste in Takoradi by the Sekondi/Takoradi Metropolitan Assembly seems to be getting out of hand as waste deposited on the roadside to be collected by the private waste management contractors has piled up for weeks.
The irony of the situation is that scavengers which prey on the gathered waste end up scattering the waste around, thereby compounding the waste management problem in the twin-city. The most affected area is the Effia Kuma New Site and its surrounding areas.
This has been attributed to the fact that the assembly owes the contractors huge sums of money and also payments have not been regular.
Speaking at a recent assembly meeting, the Metropolitan Chief Executive, Mr Philip Kwesi Nkrumah, had this to say “We are owing the contractors for about eight months. We are not paying economic rate to the private contractors”.
He, therefore, urged the assembly members to sit down to review the rate to make the private contractors efficient, and further called on the various sub committees to put their heads together to ensure that the assembly generated enough revenue, adding “We are piling up debts.”
“Let us discuss the issue dispassionately; some of the companies are threatening to leave”, he said, adding “ their services are not the best but there are problems they are encountering”.
Mr Nkrumah noted that the assembly was not fulfilling its part of the bargain, and urged the members to come out with a solution.
The Chairman of the Finance and Administration Sub Committee of the Sekondi/Takoradi Metropolitan Assembly, Mr Kwabena Okyere Darko-Mensah, tasked the assembly to critically look at the waste management problem since it was taking about 40 per cent of the assembly’s total revenue, stressing “We are spending so much money on waste management”.
He noted that if the assembly’s monitoring system were to be working well the private waste management companies would have been operating efficiently.