Accra Adopts New Garbage Collection Strategy

The Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA) is to engage some unemployed youths in a community-garbage collection programme. The programme forms part of measures being instituted to tackle the problem of sanitation in the national capital.

According to the Chief Executive of the Accra, Solomon Darko, some medium-scale enterprises within local communities will be contracted to engage the unemployed youth, who were recently registered, as the core group of workers to de-silt gutters and clean their immediate environment. Mr Darko believes that the community based collection system will be more sustainable because those involved stayed in the communities and are more likely to be committed to the tasks.

He said the AMA Sanitation Task Force will be reorganised into three gangs, each provided with three vans to respond to emergency garbage collection at public places after functions such as rallies, carnivals and festivals. Others will go round specific areas as such the Kwame Nkrumah Circle, densely populated areas and busy streets to pick litter, polythene sachets and used ice water containers at specific periods of the day after the sweepers have finished their work in the morning.

The Chief Executive said three private companies have been identified to engage in a pilot project of recycling garbage to generate electricity and that a high powered government delegation would leave Accra next week for the United States to explore the possibilities of establishing such companies in the country. He said by the middle of this year the Assembly would have awarded a contract to an international or local company that had the plant and equipment to engage in a five-year garbage collection in the city after a competitive bidding.