The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has expressed its willingness to partner Jospong Group of Companies (JGC), particularly its subsidiary company, Zoomlion Ghana Limited (ZGL), and other waste management companies to keep the country clean.
The Executive Director of EPA, Dr Henry Kwabena Kokofu, who made this observation, expressed that the state agency was pleased with the activities of Zoomlion, stressing that it will collaborate more with the company to save the environment.
He added that EPA was poised to open its doors to collaborative work with private players in the waste management space to ensure their works are backed by compliance.
Dr Kokofu has therefore commended all private waste companies, especially Zoomlion, for their relentless efforts to rid the city of filth.
He however underscored that EPA will not hesitate to apply sanctions to whoever would want to thwart the efforts of the private enterprises in the field of their work by not complying with rules and regulations.
According to him, metropolitan, municipal and district assemblies (MMDAs) have the responsibility to effectively manage waste within their jurisdictions.
Dr Kokofu urged the MMDAs to step up their game in the management and disposal of waste while urging Ghanaians to brace themselves to the reality of paying a bit more to ensure proper waste management in their communities.
“We must have a concerted effort in dealing with the waste we generate. The consciousness of the nation must be awakened, and all the religious and traditional leaders must join in awakening of this consciousness among Ghanaians,” Dr Kokofu said.
The EPA boss made the remarks on the back of a presentation by JGC at the ongoing COP 26 meeting at the UN Climate Change Conference on what the company was doing to help the country address the negative impact of climate change.
He said the EPA will also be monitoring every stage of the country’s waste disposal value chain.
This, Dr Kokofu explained, will ensure the government gets value for money in the management and disposal of waste.
He explained that the EPA’s decision was to enable them track where and how especially electric wastes were being disposed.
The collaboration with the private sector, he said, would be directed towards seeing the “point source of waste collection, particularly electrical and electronic waste, where they are being collected? The quantum collected? And then where they are being transported to? The off-taker facility that would help them use them as raw materials to the recycling plant.”
This when done, he indicated, will “help us as the nation to have data on how much we are collecting.”
Zoomlion accepts challenge
Meanwhile, Zoomlion has welcomed the decision of EPA to monitor every stage of Ghana’s waste disposal value chain.
According to the company, the move will spur them on to continue to deliver quality services.
At the ongoing world climate change summit, the Consultant, Engineering, Design and Projects Department, AFESC, Mr Israel Boakye Acheampong, in a presentation, explained that JGC was using the opportunity presented at the COP26 to show its contributions to the climate change space with innovative ideas to sustainably manage waste in Ghana with positive impact on climate.
He stressed the need for strategic partnerships to augment JGC’s skills. His presentation focused on JGC’s integrated waste management approach that combines innovation, technology and management based on reuse, recycling, recovery and safe disposal of waste since 2006.
He said JGC was ready to make effective use of various technical and financial opportunities at the COP26 to accelerate its support for Ghana in mitigating the impact of climate change.
To address indiscriminate dumping and burning of waste in Ghana, Mr Boakye Acheampong noted that Zoomlion had hugely invested in storage facilities with bins and collection systems in the country, which had improved waste collection from homes, from about four per cent in 2006 to about 21 per cent in 2021.
For her part, the Managing Director of Africa Environmental Sanitation Consult, the research wing of the Jospong Group of Companies (JGC), Dr Abena Antwi Asomaning, who is also at the climate change summit, minced no words in asserting that activities of Ghanaians have contributed to the climate change condition.
“If not anything how people throw about things in the environment, even work to do, relationship and even how people dump things in the sea,” she said.
She called for government’s intervention in the recycling of waste.
