Refuse piles up at Adenta SSNIT Flats

A drive through the Adenta SSNIT Flats leaves one with just one impression: either residents do not care about their surroundings, or the fight against a clean, healthy environment is a lost battle for the community.

The bins are overflowing and residents, without any option, continue to add to the pile as the waste generated in their homes which cannot be kept indoors for weeks, is left uncollected by the waste service provider.

The result? The once beautiful well laid out streets are lined up with heaps of bagged refuse as seen at dumpsites.

The Adenta SSNIT Flats community was built in the 1990s as part of efforts to provide the working middle class with accommodation. It is, therefore, home to persons with varied professional backgrounds.

The flats are occupied by doctors, teachers, nurses, accountants, and other middle-class workers while the courts are reserved for the middle-level management of the public and civil service.

In view of how the community is structured, residents rely heavily on the Adentan Municipal Assembly (AdmA) currently headed by the Municipal Chief Executive, Mr Daniel Nii-Noi Adumuah for services, particularly, in waste management.

However, for some time now, the assembly has struggled to deliver this essential service to the community, as it has not been able to find a workable solution to this challenge, but also very embarrassing to residents, who cannot do much to get it resolved.

Ironically, the assembly is housed within the heart of the flats, but the community is not feeling its presence at all.

Sizeable community   

Given the number of people who live in the community, a lot of waste is generated so if the waste is left uncollected for even a week, it could result in serious health hazards.

Fact is, perhaps, apart from the SSNIT Flats at Tema, the Adenta community is one of the largest of such flats, with about 78 blocks and about 40 courts. Each block houses 16 units of flats while the courts have 12.

The community has even further developed with some private properties sited close by and squatters also setting up their own community just behind the flats. And they all, though illegally, share the same waste bins with the residents of the flats.

Each block has between six to eight waste bins.

In the 1990s, the service provider collected the waste twice a week, Fridays and Mondays, to ensure that the clean, neat environment that the community was noted for was maintained.

Over time, the service was reduced from twice to once a week with the cost going up.

At least since 2015, the community has been left stranded with poor service and made to wait sometimes for more than two weeks to have service rendered.

Complaints

After several complaints to the assembly, the then service provider, Zoom Alliance, was changed and replaced with Jekora Ventures. For the first few months, the new service provider was on schedule for the weekly collection and the men on duty would even ensure that every litter that had spilled over was collected, something that Zoom Alliance did not do.

The situation has changed again and the community is again being engulfed in filth.

Per the current agreement as provided by the AdMA, the waste collection is once a week. However, there is no clear collection plan – sometimes once every two weeks but now it is not clear what the arrangement is because since May 7, there has been no collection and the waste has piled up to very worrying levels and there is usually no word from either the provider or the assembly on what is being done to alleviate the situation.

To avoid the rush hour traffic, almost everyone leaves for work by 5:45 a.m., hoping that by the time they return, the issue would have been dealt with, only to find that nothing has changed.

Unlike in other communities, where residents can use other service providers, it is not easy to get the tricycle operators to serve the community.

Service provider

The service provider has blamed the situation on the lack of a final dumpsite. An official of Jekora Ventures last Thursday admitted that there was real challenge with easy access to a landfill site, explaining that the landfill site at Tema, serving the Greater Accra Metropolitan Area (GAMA), was choked.

The official, who did not want to be named, said apart from that, there was also a challenge with logistics.

“We have only one truck serving the Adenta SSNIT Flats community. It broke down and we were unable to fix it on time and that created the situation, we are doing our best to resolve it.

“If by the next two days the truck has not been fixed, we may have to deploy some of our smaller tricycles to serve the community, but again, looking at the amount of waste to be handled, that plan would also not be fit for purpose,” he said.

Residents, AdMA

Concerned about what their community was gradually being turned into, some residents have asked the assembly to find a more efficient way of resolving the issue as things could degenerate into an environmental hazard.

“Soon, the rains would be here and we all know how it rains in Adenta, if this challenge is not resolved once and for all, I’m afraid we could be living on an environmental time bomb,” Paa Kow Ansah, a resident said.

The municipal assembly said the issue had come to its notice and was also trying to get the service provider to get to work to resolve the challenge.

“ Yes, we have had complaints from some residents and we have called the service providers and they have given the assurance that the issue would be resolved. While we apologise for the inconvenience caused, we urge residents within the flats to be patient as we work to improve the situation,” an official of the Health and Safety Unit of AdMa said.

Until that is done, residents will, unfortunately, live with that unenviable tag now hanging around their necks: ”Ladies and gentlemen engulfed in a filthy community”.

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