KMA owes GHC100m debt in sanitation

The Kumasi Metropolitan Assembly (KMA) is reportedly owing sanitation contractors an amount of GH¢ 100 million.

Chairman of the Environmental and Sanitation sub-committee of KMA, James Nana Prempeh made this known on Wednesday in Accra when members of the committee paid a courtesy call on Sanitation and Water Resources Minister, Cecilia Abena Dapaah.

According to him, the debt has been accumulating over the last 20 years and is posing serious challenges to refuge collection in Kumasi as waste contractors always raise concerns over the nonpayment of their debts anytime they are called upon by KMA to work.

Recently KMA had to take over management of the landfill site because it was owing one of the six contractors in the metropolis, Stanley K. Owusu, over GH¢ 80 million, he said.

The Chairman also pointed out a plethora of challenges facing KMA in regard to waste management, calling on the minister to intervene.

Madam Dapaah, meanwhile, promised to find solutions to some of the challenges facing KMA.

She stated that the sanitation situation in Ghana shall be addressed and that there will come a time that the country will have “zero landfill sites because we should be able to treat our waste. Waste is wealth and we should be able to treat our wastes and get revenue from it,” she said.

According to the Minister, there is lot of harm in keeping the landfill sites open for long that is why there should be zero landfills.

“Treatment plants should be the way to go,” she stressed, adding that we should always have good environmental practices.

The Minister charged KMA to ensure that firms contracted to lift waste do so regularly and should be sanctioned any time they default.