Disaster is looming at Sofokrom in the Sekondi/Takoradi metropolis as waste management companies in the area have indiscriminately been discharging solid and liquid waste at an abandoned landfill site.
The only landfill which serves the entire metropolis, is currently overly full but waste management companies keep discharging waste there, triggering fears of potential health hazard in the area.
Contractors managing the site are said to have abandoned the landfill site due to nonpayment.
These came to light when a joint parliamentary select committee toured the region to inspect the sanitary conditions of landfill sites in the country on the back of the recent fire outbreak at the Kpone landfill site in the Greater Accra Region.
Members of Parliament of the committees arrived at the landfill site to find faecal matter being disposed openly into bushes causing repugnant scent in the area.
They described the area a disaster zone that requires immediate attention.
A source at the waste management department of the Sekondi/Takoradi Metropolitan Assembly revealed the Assembly lacks the capacity to manage the landfill, and underscored the need to contract a waste management company to help provide proper engineered landfill management.
MP for Banda and the first deputy Minority Chief Whip, Ahmed Ibrahim, condemned the sanitation condition of the landfill site describing it as a “sanitation disaster waiting to explode”.
He said modern practices in waste management focuses on waste recycling which is sustainable and should be the focus of every assembly to ensure waste is recovered and recycled into other usable materials.
“The joint select committee on this tour will recommend the establishment of waste recycling and compost plants across all the regions to help create jobs and resources out of the waste been generated,” he said.
Deputy Regional Minister of the Western Region, Gifty Eugenia Kusi said waste recycling and composting, as demonstrated by Zoomlion’s Integrated Recycling and Compost Plant (IRECOP) in Accra, should be established in the region to help create value and jobs out of the waste in the region.
She appealed to the parliamentarians to advocate an increase in the budget allocated to the region to help tackle sanitation.
By 3news.com|Ghana