The Director of Waste Management at the Tema Metropolitan Assembly (TMA) has revealed the Tema landfill site will be under immense pressure to receive garbage from across the region due to the closure of the Accra Composite Plant.
He is therefore, appealing to other Assemblies across the Greater Accra Region to make efforts in acquiring their own dump sites to ease the pressure.
“All those trucks that were dumping at the compost plant will have to come to Tema to dump so there will be more pressure on our landfill,” Jonas Duneebon explained.
The Tema Landfill site is the only dumping site available to receive garbage in the region.
Management of the Accra Compost and Recycling Plant has shut down operations due to the delay in the release of funds by government.
The situation has resulted in the laying off of about 100 workers.
Speaking on the Citi Breakfast Show on Tuesday, TMA Waste Management Director, Mr. Duneebon stated that the TMA dumping site is already under pressure and the site is getting full.
According to him, the site has four cells “and we are currently on the third cell so we only have one cell left and if the third cell is full, it will mean we will have only one cell left.”
He also noted that the emptying of garbage trucks at the TMA landfill site takes time to be accomplished therefore, “it will take a longer time for one truck to dump and go back to work again.”
Mr. Duneebon disclosed that the landfill site was originally designed to get full within a period of 10 years “but now we are about 14 to 15 months into the start of the landfill and we are in the third cell.”
He complained that if the current trend continues, the TMA landfill site will be filled in less than three years.
Refuse in Accra has been piling for about a month now.
The Environmental Service Providers Association (ESPA) has blamed their inability to manage the tonnes of garbage generated daily in the country on inadequate funding from government.
Residents in Accra have asked the Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA) to call the refuse collection companies to order but the problem is still lingering.
By: Efua Idan Osam/citifmonline.com/Ghana
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