Oblogo landfill site will be full in August

Accra, June 30, GNA -Stanley Nii Adjiri Blankson, Accra Metropolitan Chief Executive, on Monday announced that the Oblogo landfill site, the current site where rubbish collected from the metropolis is dumped, would be full in August and there is the urgent need to secure an alternative place.

He said the Metropolitan Assembly had already got a temporary place but the appropriate place needed was the Kwabenya landfill site, which he described as a natural landfill site.

"There is the need to use the place as landfill site to help develop the place gradually for the people," Nii Adjiri Blankson said when the Parliamentary Select Committee on Local Government visited the Assembly to interact with members.

The AMA boss cited the examples of Asylum Down and Ridge in Accra which had once been used as landfill sites and were now competitive places where people were fighting over the land. He said any action that the AMA took was in the interest of the people and development and urged people to collaborate with the AMA to help the city to develop to its required standard. Nii Adjiri Blankson called on the MPs to, as a matter of urgency, take the issue of waste management to the floor of the House and discuss it for a lasting solution while calling on the central government to budget for the Kwabenya landfill site to enable the project to take off by January next year.

"Accra generates over 2,000 metric tonnes of waste a day," he said, adding that there was the need to deal with waste in a practical way to ensure sanitation in the city. He mentioned the indiscriminate disposal of refuse particularly the sachet water in the city among the major challenges that the assembly had to deal with.

Raising concerns about the Assembly's challenges, Nii Adjiri Blankson pointed to the re-emergence of recalcitrant hawkers on the pavements and streets of Accra after millions of cedis had been spent to construct a shopping mall at Odawna for them. He said the shopping mall had the capacity to accommodate over 4,000 traders and had additional facilities like a warehouse and security.

Nii Adjiri Blankson called on the MPs to help address the issue in parliament to rid the street of hawkers since they were causing both vehicular and pedestrian confusion. On revenue mobilization, he said the assembly had completed a revaluation of properties in the metropolis and expressed the hope that annual property revenue would increase from GHc1.9 million to GHc6.5 million.

"We are also taking measures to reduce to the barest minimum the leakages in the financial system in order to achieve maximum revenue targets." Mr Isaac Edumadze, MP for Ajumako, Enyan, Essiam and chairman of the committee, said the assemblies and the Local Government Ministry were in partnership in the making of by-laws and other regulations.