To safeguard their health, pupils, parents and teachers of some public schools within the Ablekuma Central Municipal Assembly have been compelled to contribute money to help dispose off waste.

The assembly which is responsible for waste collection is facing a number of challenges and is sometimes unable to collect waste from schools regularly, leaving the schools to adopt ways to cater for that.

The Municipal Environmental Health Officer of the Ablekuma Central Municipal Assembly, Ms Bridget Seyram Diapim, explained that the assembly had been provided with one skip truck and a rubbish compactor that catered for all the public schools within the assembly.

The assembly also has 12 tricycles and eight drivers.

Ms Diapim said the tricycles went to the schools for waste collection once a week.
However, she said when the tricycles were faulty, the drivers were unable to collect the waste for a whole week.

“The tricycles are sometimes kept at the Kpong dump site for three days before they are able to offload due to congestion and queues at the site”, she said.

According to her, the sanitation problem was not peculiar to the Ablekuma Central Municipal Assembly but other assemblies were also facing similar challenges.

Ms Diapim said the problem could be managed if local government supported the assembly with enough drivers and machinery.

“The government should build more recycling companies, employ more drivers and provide rubbish compactors for the assembly”, she appealed.