Officials of the Waste Management Department of the Accra Metropolitan Authority (AMA) say the Teshie-Nungua composite plant has become obsolete and therefore plans are under way to rehabilitate it and turn the facility into a recycling plant.
The composite plant was established in the 1980s to produce manure from solid waste on commercial bases, but at the moment the plant is producing under capacity due to old age.
Currently the AMA has two main sites for refuse disposal. Refuse from the eastern part of Accra ends up at the Teshie-Nungua composite plant whilst refuse from the western side goes to the Oblogo site.
Samuel Kpodo, the Senior Environmental Health Technologist in charge of Solid Waste and Frank Chinebuah, Chief Environmental Health Officer of the Waste Management Department of AMA in an interview with Public Agenda said the main problem with the composite site is inadequate funds to rehabilitate it and therefore it might be opened up for private participation in the near future.
In recent times concerns have been raised over how the waste disposal sites are being managed as residents close to these sites complain of the stench, flies, as well as the spillage of waste from the dumpsite to other areas.
Explaining the processes undertaken at the composite site, Kpodo said refuse brought in by the trucks are grouped in small heaps and left to decompose for six to eight months after which it is sieved, and the inorganic waste is separated and the organic is bagged for sale.
He said that periodically, chemicals are sprayed on the waste dump so as to check the breeding of flies and also to minimize the stench coming out of the place, but added that even with this measure the control is not absolute.
"You can control this little by little but you cannot take away the stench and the flies totally, when the flies level becomes high we spray it, he said.
Residents Public Agenda earlier spoke to revealed that the plant was an inconvenience to them, since the stench during the raining season and the flies emanating from the site made life unbearable. A female resident and food vendor also disclosed that the composite site breeds a lot of flies in the area, which is an inconvenience to her customers and her business.
But Frank Chinebuah, Chief Environmental Health Offices of the Waste Management Department of AMA had this to say in reaction;
"There has been an encroachment in the area, when the site was initially built there was a buffer zone created within which people were not suppose to build there. The buffer zone was for the building of trees and other facilities to secure the place".
He indicated that there is a plant engineer and an oversight officer at the site who monitors the place, but the activities of "waste pickers" who enter the place illegally sometimes adds to the problem as they defecate there and sometimes start fires.
When asked what has become of the Mallam refuse dump, Kpodo said the site had been closed down, but they were waiting for the refuse to settle after which it would be covered. "Currently we are managing the liquid that comes out from the site, we use our toilet tankers to suck out the "leachate"- contaminated liquid, that comes out during the raining season."
Touching on the Oblogo Site, he said they undertake periodic spraying for flies, mosquitoes and odour control adding that the leachate that comes as out as a result of the activities of the site, is also sucked out.
He said the main reason why the residents of Oblogo are crying foul is because the promises made to them have not being fulfilled. He said the AMA came to an agreement with the people when the land was being given to AMA that they would construct a road, a market and a clinic.
According to Chinebuah only the first phase of the road and market construction has been done and plans are far advanced to finish them. He explains that the clinic has not been built because they could not secure land for the project.
Residents of Oblogo last week went on a demonstration calling for the closure of the dumpsite, which they said had become a health hazard.
Another official of the Waste Management Department, the Principal Environmental Health Technologist in Charge of Engineering Services and Landfills, Anderson N Blay, said that the proposed Kwabenya Sanitary Engineered Landfill Site, would be the best solution to the problem of waste disposal in the city.
He said it would "be a state of the art, well-engineered site, you cannot equate it to Mallam and it is unfortunate that is what residents at Kwabenya think it is going to be". If it is constructed, Ghana would be the first country in Africa apart from South Africa to have such a facility".
He said that there are a lot of misconceptions and misunderstandings about waste disposal that people think it is toxic. But he noted that there are no such toxic wastes in Ghana as yet.
He said the bottom line is "refuse must be disposed off and that is the question that people easily forget, adding that the same people who do not want a refuse dump near their area wants their refuse to be collected.
"Residents at Kwabenya forget that their refuse collected ends up at the Oblogo site."
Kwabenya residents concerns however cannot be ignored especially in the light of the experiences of other communities which have had the misfortune of hosting AMA dumpsites. AMA itself has not inspired confidence in residents that it has the capacity to manage the refuse problem .
Certainly going ahead with such a project without the support of residents could be disastrous.
