PART ONE
Dear Mayor,
I hope this finds you,
I write to register my displeasure about how you allowed your enviable name to be dragged to the mud with this so-called sanitation report.
I read with shock the news making rounds and especially on Citifmonline that the Accra Metropolitan Assembly has initiated an assessment procedure for waste management contractors operating within their jurisdiction specifically in 6 sub-metros. In the report, they used the following among others as the criteria for measuring the performance of the contractors. The ability to register premises in service zones, supply standard solid waste bins (plastic or metallic), promote recycling, integrate informal waste collectors as well as service clients regularly. Also collaborate with relevant departments to ensure clean environment, service coverage, maintenance of designated sanitary sites, provision of personal protective equipment (PPEs) and submission of monthly reports and innovation in the collection of market waste.
By your score points only Jekorah Ventures Limited scored 80.6 but the rest scored below average as published.
As an inquisitive Ghanaian who follows issues that bother on environment and sanitation I have been attending a lot of sanitation fora so I have a lot of knowledge of the happenings in the industry here in Ghana.
In this letter, I will take the criteria used by your AMA and expose the skewed politically vindictive vigilante sanitation scores aimed at tarnishing the image of hardworking sanitation contractors for an undeserving politician you have been projecting since you came to office.
I will also be quick to advise that the sanitation work is bigger than politics and there is enough refuse for everyone to collect so it will be better to be honest this kind of childish ratings without cause.
How does a company you said has problems with fleet now become so efficient?
Ability to register premises in service zones
Your outfit in that report wants us to believe that Jekorah is the only company that has registered more clients in their service area but I beg to differ Zoomlion Domestic Services Limited (ZDSL) as part of its effort to cover every household and business entity birthed NaWaBin and collected data of clients and potential clients nationwide and that data is being used by ZDSL.
More specifically, there is no household or corporate entity in Ghana that existed before 2017 that is not captured in this data. Besides ZDSL itself have another database of it’s clientele and continues to register more on daily basis across Ghana so your report is contestable because it is shredded with biases, inconsistency and political machination.
Supply standard solid waste bins (plastic or metallic)
Again the malice and political vigilante attitude has blindfolded you and your AMA to forget so soon that it is also the same ZDSL that for the purposes of efficiency established Universal Plastic Products and Recycling Limited (UPPR) which produces a bin per three minutes so that if the whole of Accra was given to ZLDSL it can supply clients with bins without difficulty.
How else can Jekorah who doesn’t produce waste bins be able to supply bins more than ZLDS?
Promote recycling
Is it not a well-known fact that Zoomlion started doing composting and recycling way back in June 2012? When did Jekorah start organic recycling? Indeed, ZDSL does both plastic and organic recycling.
If it is difficult to get Ghanaians to agree to subscribe to waste services by registering and owning a waste bin at a fee how, is it getting them to separate it from source that is possible? In any case AMA should have told us the number of clients Jekorah has for the source separation that it is so enthused about.
Zoomlion knowing that source separation is not yet acceptable by Ghanaians constructed the Accra Compost and Recycling Plant (ACARP) which separates collected waste into plastic, organic, glass, metals and textiles and used for different recycling activities so it is shameful for any person or group of persons to purport that there is another company in Ghana that does recycling than ZDSL. Even government buys organic compost produced by ACARP for agricultural use among farmer groups from ACARP and AMA doesn’t know about that?
Indeed, it is instructive to state that the company’s quest for green revolution in Ghana and recycling for that matter has almost completed a bigger compost plant in Kumasi call the Kumasi Compost and Recycling Plant (KCARP) and another one at Jamestown on the Korle-Bu road which is ready for inauguration among ten others soon to be installed at the regions.
So AMA must come again. I am dead surprise that respected Agyei Sowah will allow people to squeeze his integrity to make their name in such a porous report.
Why did they not separate Jekorah’s recycling plant from the domestic cleaning service like you did to ZDL? Why did you refuse to accept that tropical uses ZL branded trucks? So a contractor cannot rent trucks or you don’t know that Tropical is a subsidiary of ZL again? In such ratings you should have spelt out AMA’s obligation is a critical issue to the great performance of the contractors why did you leave that out?
Integrate informal waste collectors as well as service clients regularly
You are not unaware of the existence of the Environmental Service Providers Association (ESPA) which the owners of ZDSL and Jekorah Ventures Dr. Joseph Siaw Agyepong and Mr. Emmanuel Martey Tokoli are president and vice president respectively. Most of the MMDCEs within the Accra Metropolis attended including the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development and Ministry of Sanitation and Water Resources under the invitation and sponsorship of Jospong to an end of year get-together for Informal Waste Collectors (Tricycle Riders) at the Trade Fair Centre.
Addressing the function, Dr. Agyepong said currently ESPA had over 1,500 members who are tricycle waste collectors in the Greater Accra Region alone, with presence as well in the Central, Ashanti, Western, Volta and Brong Ahafo Regions.
He said all tricycle riders were registered with ID cards to curb vices, with every rider to be provided with boots, gloves, shovels, uniforms, brooms, pickers and nets to cover the rubbish during transportation.
H said to ease transportation to larger dump sites, there are transfer stations at Achimota, Mallam, Mortuary road Agbogbloshie, Amansaman Kotoku, Kasoa Awutu Senya, Teshie, and James Town which can process about 400 tons of waste. He said some 1,000 tricycles were being procured to augment the ridders obsolete tricycles and that PPEs will be provided to protect them from related ailments. Is that different from the integration you talking of?
If you have a problem with ZSDL a
nd the other companies, please you should let us know otherwise this is wicked.
The mother company Zoomlion Ghana Limited donated ten brand new Nissan pick-ups for you to facilitate monitoring of waste activities because they do not fear monitoring but if this is the kind of monitoring you do, who will give you a knife to slaughter him.
Sometime it surprises me with this African politicians, it is only in Africa here that politicians use their appointments to victimize people and that must stop.
I am concern citizen and what I know I will not allow
Karim Yelma Kassim is a Development Communications Consultant.
Source: Thepressradio.com/Dickson Boadi
