Zoomlion Ghana Limited, a waste management company has trained over 70 stakeholders in the Ayawaso-North municipality to effectively implement its “one household; one bin” initiative.
The company in October last year announced that it will distribute one million waste bins nationwide to every household, in collaboration with metropolitan, municipal and district assemblies.
Ayawaso-North is the first district that signed on to the project, hence the training programme. The project is being sponsored by Ecobank.
Addressing trainees, Municipal Chief Executive of the area Alhaji Mohammed Aminu Zakari said with this initiative the assembly will be able to enforce its sanitation by-laws to the fullest.
He said “we have been charitable in the enforcement of our by-laws. We believe “one bin one household” will solve the problem. We hope the people of Ayawaso-North and Ghanaians in general will adopt it and work with it.
Presenting an overview of the project, Program coordinator Lawrence Laryea said the initiative intended to provide proper storage and collection facilities in various households.
He noted that the waste bin distribution programme will be supported with IT technology, where all the bins that will be distributed will be tracked so that the location of every bin is known.
He said the initiative also aimed at reducing indiscriminate littering as well as reducing the burning of waste.
“We will tag every waste bin that we are going to distribute. When the bin is lifted, all the trucks that will empty the bins will have scanners to tell when the waste bin was serviced and also we are able to identify how many of the waste bins have been serviced, with frequency over a period of time. This will help the assembly monitor the services of the service providers.
“Eventually the assembly will have data on all households that have access to waste bins and whether the service providers are servicing them properly or not,” Laryea stated.
He named stakeholders of the initiative as universal plastic products and recycling services who are in charge of producing and distributing the waste bins.
“Relevant MMDAs, service providers who are those servicing the waste bins, households that will receive the waste bins, Islamic and Christian community, traditional leaders, as well as Ecobank who offered loan facilities as well as support with revenue collection from the households.”
He said 600,000 waste bins will be given out this year. Prices have, however, not been set for the cost of the waste bins.
Source: Ghana/Starrfmonline.com/103.5FM/Senanu Damilola Wemakor
