Kwabenya residents still vehemently opposed to landfill project

Residents of Agyamankata, a community near Kwabenya, have vowed to continue opposing the sitting of a landfill site in the area, saying they would fight it to death.

"We are resolved not to allow the dumping of waste here," Mr Isaac Amo Smith, who spoke on behalf of the residents, told the Ghana News Agency at Agyamankata at the weekend.

"We will rather die than to allow the project to take over our lands," he said. The Accra Metropolitan Authority (AMA), which had struggled for years to have a suitable waste disposal system in the city, was engulfed in a big load of rubbish last year when residents of Mallam, where a landfill site was located, protested against its use.

Waste disposal companies, with tons of rubbish in their trucks, were stuck with nowhere to dump their cargo. The western half of the city was threatened with an epidemic as hills of rubbish quickly formed, flies hovered around, foul stench engulfed the areas and there were threats of diseases.

The AMA chose to develop the Kwabenya landfill site but immediately ran into stiff opposition from the residents. Although the project, which the AMA said, would be the most technologically advanced to be constructed in the country, would eventually cater for waste in Accra for the next 20 years, the residents said it was a threat to their health their land and property and kicked against it.

Mr Smith said AMA should consider relocating the landfill site now and urged the government to consider using the 40 billion cedis meant as compensation, to relocate the whole project. "Most of us are retired civil servants and traders who have come to acquire lands here after our retirement; we cannot therefore relocate at this time of our lives," he said.

Mr Smith, who is also the proprietor of Nana Saah Memorial School, said it would be better for government to stop now than allow the project to continue only to become "a white elephant."

He said the residents were not deterred by what was going on "because no one has till date has been here to value our property. Neither has anyone written to officially inform residents of such a project."

"We are therefore still going on with our projects such as construction, farming and quarrying," he said. While work was proceeding on the landfill site, some private developers were also laying foundations for their buildings along part of the buffer zone earmarked for the project.

Mr Smith said after the visit of Vice President Aliu Mahama to Kwabenya to appeal to residents to allow the project to resume after its closure, the women within the community organised themselves and sent a petition to parliament on the matter. "I do not think they have as yet received any response," he said.

Mr Smith said policemen were deployed to the site after the residents organised a press conference in Accra last November. "The police themselves realised that we are peace loving people so they left without encountering any confrontation."

Mr Smith said the most worrying aspect of the project was that although the place was a valley it had a number of communities especially housing estates bordering the proposed land filled site.

At the north is Agyemankata, the south the ACP Housing Estate, the east Pokuase Township while Volta Investment had acquired the western side for a housing project. "How can all these communities live with that waste for the next 20 years?" he asked.

Mr Smith said if the AMA claimed landfills were not as hazardous as the residents of Agyemankata portrayed it, then the AMA could as well site it at the Tetteh Quarshie round about since there was a vast piece of land still lying fallow there.

He called on the President to extend his zero tolerance for corruption to all segments of the society especially in areas where the health and very existence of residents were being threatened.