The Northern Regional Manager of Zoomlion Ghana Limited, the leading Waste Management Company in the country, has lamented the nonpayment of bills by households in the greater Tamale area.
Mr. Peter Dawuni, in an exclusive interview, told THE CUSTODIAN Online that, their books shows an amount in excess of three million (¢3 million) cedis have not been paid by customers in the area.
Mr. Peter indicated the revenue shortfall has adversely hindered the prompt and timely waste management services in the area and daily operations of the company.
“What we’re experiencing in Tamale is that, we provide waste bin services to households and payment becomes a challenge, and it then comes back to hit our operations; and we all know what is happening globally – fuel prices increasing, exchange rate also affecting cost of our spare parts and other activities that we do” he lamented.
In addressing the situation, the Zoomlion Manager called on the City authorities and the district assemblies to enforce the relevant byelaws regulating the sanitation sector to ensure that the communities fulfill their obligations.
“…That means the assemblies would also be in the position to put service providers on their toes to provide excellent services in their operational areas”.
The Citywide Sanitation Plan launched by the Sagnarigu municipal in collaboration with the Catholic Relief Services (CRS) early this week, has revealed a significant gap along both the solid waste and liquid waste service value-chain.
The municipality has been characterized by open defecation, disposal of liquid waste in unauthorized places, uncontrolled operation of fecal sludge as well as manual desludgers.
THE CUSTODIAN has gathered 50 per cent of the public toilets were poorly managed and unclean with only 12 per cent of public toilets with hand washing facilities.
Sharing an insight on this, Mr. Peter Dawuni said the assembly byelaws must be enforced to ensure customers do the needful by paying their bills which in his view will service providers would be compelled to be very excellent in their service delivery.
“Because if payment is not made then service providers find it difficult to offer their services; the issue that communal container sites are not properly managed all boils down to the enforcement of the byelaws and I think that that assembly should be very central in this waste management practices” he opined.
