Kpone youth threatens massive demo against overage landfill site

The Organized Youth for Development at Kpone Katamanso District Assembly (KKDA) has threatened to embark on series of actions, including demonstrations to press home their demand for the government to shut down the Kpone landfill site which they claim is killing them in the municipality.

Narrating their ordeal to the media during a facility tour, the youth leader Nii Noi Tetteh, lamented that they had so far had fruitless engagements with the Minister of Sanitation and Water Resources, Cecilia Abena Dapaah and the Greater Accra Regional Minister, Ishmael Ashittey over the last six months.

The visibly frustrated leader said “we are on our last lifeline; we have no time to wait anymore.
“because of this landfill we have lost our water bodies to leach and many of the inhabitants are dying mysteriously,” he said.

Mr Tetteh said there were no accessible roads and there was no development activity ongoing in the municipality which “is a worry to the youth of the area”.

The regional minister, Ishmael Ashittey, who was flanked by other metropolitan and municipal chief executives during the tour to assess the state of the landfills and to engage the youth, appealed to the youth to exercise restraint as the government work to resolve the matter.

The Kpone Landfill was gutted by fire on August 15, 2019, and up till date, the fire continues to burn which resulted in the decommissioning of the landfill site.

The oldest site on the same land is now being used to accommodate about 800 to 900 tons of waste per day.

The regional minister appealed to the youth leaders to calm down their members to enable the government prepare to relocate the landfill site from Kpone.

He said he had discussions with the Sanitation and Water Resource Minister and said the relocation would be executed as soon as possible.

Touching on the bad road network, he said, the government had already awarded the road on contract as part of “government’s special roads” to a contractor who is mobilising to come to site.

The Municipal Chief Executive of the Tema Municipal Assembly (TMA), Felix Annang-La appealed to the youth to calm down and explained that it was practically impossible for the government or the TMA to shut down the Kpone landfill overnight.

According to the MCE, it had been decided that all other parts of Greater Accra Region except Tema, Ashaiman and Kpone were not supposed to dump their refuse at the Kpone Landfill again which was aimed at reducing the pressure on the landfill until the relocation was successfully done.

Mr Annang-La appealed to patrons of the facility from other parts of Accra to desist from hauling waste from Accra to the site henceforth.