Environmental Expert Urges Government To Ensure Enforcement And Prosecute On Illegal Dumping Offenders

Environmental Expert Urges Government To Ensure Enforcement And Prosecute On Illegal Dumping Offenders

The Ashanti Regional President for the Enviromental Service Providers Association (ESPA) and Business Development Manager For Kumasi Compost And Recycling Plant (KCARP), ING. Eugene Amo-Asamoah has urged the government to establish specialized sanitation courts to rapidly prosecute offenders and address the country’s waste management challenges in the country.

According to him, Ghana already has a legal framework that should govern our waste management and sanitation issues, and what we need is a serious government that would ensure enforcement on illegal dumping alongside the prosecution of offenses.

Again, there should also be adequate funding mechanisms that ensure sustainable waste management. He also added that our producer responsibilities should be reinforced, with reference to our polluter pay principles and extended producer responsibilities .

Also, we should establish and adopt global standards of disposal coupled with laws that work for people in the country.

He therefore added that, Kumasi shouldn’t be suffering from waste management and sanitation crisis, this is because Kumasi is already blessed with the largest compost and recycling plant in Africa, which uses state of the art technologies to process and recover useful materials from the waste to feed the industry.

KCARP has been in operation for almost 6 years, serving the good people of Kumasi and the region as a whole. That is why waste management issues haven’t been a problem for the past years in Kumasi and the region.

The solution to Kumasi’s waste management issues already exists, and as such, the government and other authorities should do their very best to ensure their financial commitment to KCARP to allow for unterruptive services from all ESPA members. Because KCARP is financially distressed, they’re unable to perform their functions as expected, and this has resulted in the inability of waste collectors to get an appropriate place to dispose of their waste in an environmentally friendly manner.