Assemblies must turn waste into money — NALAG General Secretary

The General Secretary of the National Association of Local Authorities of Ghana (NALAG), Mr Kokro Amankwah, has urged Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs) to redirect their focus on the management of sanitation to ensure that the sector becomes an avenue for revenue generation.

He said assemblies could not continue to spend huge sums of money to manage sanitation when there were opportunities to turn waste into money.

Speaking to the Daily Graphic in Accra yesterday, Mr Amankwah, who assumed office barely three weeks ago, said it was important for assemblies to explore opportunities for the recycling of solid and waste materials

Accra and Kumasi alone generate over 5,000 metric tonnes of solid waste a day, and management of the waste had always been a headache to authorities.

In total, just about five per cent of the solid waste generated in the two cities was recycled.

Mr Amankwah stressed the need for the private sector to be engaged in efforts to recycle waste.

Capacity-building

Mr Amankwah disclosed that NALAG would soon come out with a programme to build the capacities of the MMDAs to enable them manage environmental sanitation in a better way.

He stated that NALAG had, in that respect, hired a consultant to work on the programme so that its implementation would be smooth.

Environmental sanitation, which had been the major problem in the country, consumes substantial part of the finances of the assemblies, especially metropolitan assemblies.

In recent years, Accra for instance had suffered the outbreak of cholera as the Accra Metropolitan Assembly grappled to overcome the sanitation challenge.

The NALAG general secretary expressed the hope that if the sanitation problem was addressed, it would minimise the incidence of cholera and other communicable diseases.