The good, ugly sides of garbage tricycles

For sometime now, garbage tricycles in the cities, especially in Accra and Kumasi, during the busy hours of the day have become a daily nuisance that residents have to live with.

The nauseating smell that emits from the buckets of these garbage tricycles pollutes the air, and some of these tricycles also litter the roads with garbage as they pull along at top speed.

The very cities they want to help clean are made dirty by their movement.

The garbage tricycles sometimes pull away recklessly, making nonsense of the rights of other road users.

In the last 10 years, the garbage tricycles waste collection concept has formed part of efforts to improve waste collection in the metropolis, and these tricycles have filled a major gap by ensuring effective collection of waste from communities, especially in densely-populated but low-income areas where waste collection trucks cannot have access to.

Although these garbage tricycles are making huge contributions to solid waste management in the city, they often cause nuisance on the roads.

The use of the tricycle for refuse collection should, therefore, be regularised and controlled by the provision of operational guidelines and possibly training to check the trend.

Waste collection has for a long time been one of the biggest problems confronting our major cities.

Every year, metropolitan assemblies make huge budgetary allocations for waste management; yet, the challenges of waste collection remain unresolved.

Government interventions haven’t helped either.