Waste management: The untapped pro-poor business
Waste management is an important component of local government systems but Ghana has traditionally got it wrong. Waste is generated and littered around cities and communities haphazardly, with some refuse dumps left to mount several hundreds of metres up high without attention from local government authorities.
Advertisement
This is in spite of bye-laws that criminalise several actions and inactions regarding waste generation, disposal and collection. While various segments of the waste management stakeholders, especially the private sector, pin the issue down to weak bye-law enforcement and the absence of an investment framework, the government believes it was time for polluters to pay for waste generated, rather than look at it within the traditional lens that waste management was a social service to be financed by the central government.
Ghana’s sanitation management records have not been palatable, with the country lagging behind the Millennium Development Goals targets on the subject. As of the end of 2015, the proportion of people with access to improved basic sanitation increased from four per cent in 1993 to 12.4 per cent in 2008 which is far from the 52 per cent target in 2015.
For the urban population, the proportion increased from 10 per cent to 18 per cent over the same period as against one per cent to 8.2 per cent in rural areas (GSS, 2008). Institutional estimates indicate that the 59 per cent of the population with access to improved sanitation increased from 14 per cent in 2010 to 16 per cent in 2011 and 2012.
This is an area where the government, acting through the local authorities can engage the private sector, including households and ordinary community members to commercialise sanitation management to generate some income to support their upkeep.
However, some milestones have been achieved towards smoothening rough edges in sanitation management. First, the government, through local assemblies, has brought in the private sector as partners. The private sector is currently responsible for collecting waste directly from homes or central locations in containers.
Private sector and sanitation
Private sector players are also running landfill sites, with a few establishing recycling plants to manage various types of waste. For instance, while Blow Plast is into the recycling of plastic waste, Zoomlion is into both landfill site management and operates a compost recycling plant, which recycles organic and inorganic waste in the system.
Various private sector associations have also sprung up to engage the government to influence decisions and provide support for efficient waste management. One commendable outcome has been the setting up of the Plastic Waste Recycling Fund which would be used to support various projects and programmes for an efficient system.
Waste recycling fund
Following the Environmental Sanitation Policy in 2011, a polluter-pay mechanism of a 10 per cent ad valerom environmental tax has been imposed on plastic manufacturers and bottled water producers towards the establishment of the fund.
According to a Tax Policy Advisor at the Ministry of Finance, Dr Edward Larbi-Siaw, the fund has since 2012 yielded a total of GH¢44.3 million by the close of last year.
The ministry has broadened the scope of inflows and therefore future collections are estimated to yield higher amounts, with GH¢90 million collection estimated for 2016.
The fund has, however, not become operational because of what Dr Larbi-Siaw described, during a public discussion, as the absence of a regulation for the execution of the Act that set up the fund.
The tax policy expert said the impact of pollution on the environment and specific sectors of the economy was too dangerous and that the government was committed to operationalising the fund.
“Let me assure our stakeholders that the government is committed to giving out the money. If we must increase productivity in the economy, we have to deal with the sanitation menace,” he said in a public discourse with stakeholders in a programme sponsored by the Business Advocacy Challenge (BUSAC) fund.
The BUSAC fund has supported various private sector associations, including the Environmental Service Providers Association (ESPA) and the Plastic Waste Collectors Association of Ghana (PWCAG) who embarked on an advocacy towards the execution of the fund so as to encourage investments that would hasten the pace at checking environmental pollution, as well as waste generation and disposal.
Dr Larbi-Siaw explained that the modalities for using the fund would be spelt out, while discussions were underway to migrate it into a Green Fund to broaden its scope of use and effectiveness.
The Project Coordinator of the Plastic Waste Collectors Association of Ghana (PWCAG), Mr Quaranchie Adama-Tettey, said the private sector collaboration in waste was prompted by a threat by city authorities in 2007 to ban plastic use.
A team of people were sensitised to collect plastic waste (mainly water sachet) and that number has grown to about 7,500 members, including 7,000 minor collectors and 500 major collectors (the big buyers).
Mr Adama-Tettey said while the initiative had so far been successful with lots of income generation, the operationalisation of the Plastic Waste Recycling Fund was crucial to encourage new investments in the recycling business in order to nip the waste management menace in the bud.
Time to review laws
The country has diverse and varied bye-laws aimed at ensuring environmental cleanliness.
Advertisement
The Executive Secretary of the Environmental Service Providers Association (ESPA), Ms Ama Akpene Ofori-Antwi, believes the country had enough laws for waste management and sanitation, saying “what we need is enforcement.”
Her position is very instructive because it is already an offence to dump refuse indiscriminately, to defecate openly, litter, burn rubbish or refuse to subscribe to the service of sanitation service provider assigned to the locality.
“It is the assemblies that have the power to enforce the bye-laws and this needs to be strengthened. We also need a lot of education and these are areas where the Fund can help,” the executive secretary of ESPA stated.
She also wants the collection of waste management fees from households to be imbedded in the property rates that the local assemblies collect so that could be passed on to the service providers, adding that the delay in paying for services rendered was another bane that threatened their survival.
Advertisement
The outgoing deputy Minister of Local Government and Rural Development, Nii Lante Vanderpuye, who was also a discussant, said the model bye-law which guided the local assemblies to draft their unique bye-laws was being reviewed to fully implement the “Polluter Pay Policy”.
“The Ghana Environmental Sanitation Policy has been there since the colonial days, with very little reviews. We are in the process of reviewing the generality of the laws, because we have realised that they are not punitive enough, as the old cedis and pesewas are used as punishments,’’ the deputy local government minister posited.
Consultations are already underway for the review, which would include some community service as part of the sentences to be handed down to convicted offenders.
It will strengthen the local assemblies and the service providers. So when there is dumping in unauthorised locations within the assigned working jurisdiction of a service provider, the bye-laws allow the service providers to cause the local authority to deal with such offenders.
Advertisement
Mr Vanderpuye, however, stressed that the government could no longer treat waste management as a social good, but would ensure that the polluters paid for the waste they generated. This, thus, makes sanitation management a money zone where all members of the community, especially the vulnerable and unemployed, to participate to improve their earnings.