Accra, June 26, GNA - Dr Bob Offei Manteaw, a Climate Change Adaptation and Sanitation Governance Expert, has said waste and sanitation management is vital to the development of the nation hence the need for a meaningful policy.
He said the existing flaws in Ghana’s National Sanitation Policy has allowed government to cede responsibility of waste and sanitation service delivery to the private sector.
Dr Manteaw, who said this in an interview with the Ghana News Agency in Accra, on the sidelines of the just-ended West Africa Plastic Waste and Marine Litter Conference in Accra, urged government and its stakeholders to explore new approaches.
Dr Manteaw, who is a Research Fellow at the Center for Climate Change and Sustainability Studies at the University of Ghana, said most of the waste and sanitation services were currently provided by private sector companies with little or no support at all from government.
He said this was because of a statement in the National Sanitation Policy, which suggests that 80 per cent of such services be provided by the private sector while government takes up the remaining 20 per cent.
He called for a review of the National Sanitation Policy to ensure that the requisite policy environment and funding arrangements were made to facilitate private sector participation in the delivery of such services.
“The bulk of all modern waste management infrastructure in Ghana today is provided by the private sector and almost all of them face significant challenges in breaking even for cost recovery,” Dr Manteaw said.
“Waste management as a business is not profitable anywhere in the world. It is essentially a public service that is ideally subsidized by government funding to encourage private sector involvement,” he added.
Dr Manteaw said many cities were struggling with waste because of weaknesses in sanitation governance structures and particularly in financing mechanisms for service delivery.
Besides, government and people have created wrong perceptions and expectations of private sector companies such as Zoomlion, Jekora, Asadu etc because of the belief that they make so much money.
He urged the private sector to tell their stories by sharing their challenges so everyone knows the problems they faced.
The Climate Change Adaptation and Sanitation Governance Expert said: “From everything I know with the waste and sanitation situation in Ghana, there is no private sector company in Ghana that is making profit from the services they provide; in fact, most of them are struggling to break even and to recover their investments”.
He called for a more meaningful partnership between government and the private waste service providers to change the current narrative.
Dr Manteaw, who is also the Technical Advisor to West African Plastic Waste and Marine Litter Council urged government to address both the challenges of waste and sanitation management by turning that sector into a profit- making and job-creating.
In his presentation titled: “Eco-Industrial Parks as avenue for a Circular Economy in Africa”, he called for the establishment of waste recovery and processing facilities in all districts or Regional Capitals in Ghana as part of the One-District-One-Factory policy.
This, he said, was the only likely means to rid communities of indiscriminate littering adding, “these Eco-recycling industries will provide the necessary end markets to absorb waste that would have otherwise ended up in communities. When people see the value in waste and also know that there is a ready market for the waste they generate, they will keep them for sale.”
“Waste would then serve as the raw materials to these industries on the Eco-Industrial Parks. The current policy environment is timely and opportune. Until we learn to change our mindsets about waste by highlighting the resource value and provide the necessary end–markets for waste absorption, Ghana’s sanitation dilemmas may never be resolved and Accra will forever remain dirty”.
GNA
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