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Bekwai MP and Deputy Ranking Member on Parliament’s Committee on Sanitation and Water Resources, Ralph Poku-Adusei, has urged government to prioritise paying Environmental Service Providers rather than proceeding with its planned two-day national cleanup exercise, insisting that adequately resourcing these providers offers a more sustainable solution to Ghana’s sanitation crisis.
Speaking on Citi FM’s Eyewitness News on Tuesday, the MP explained that under the Environmental Sanitation Policy, waste management remains solely the responsibility of government, which he said is obligated to provide the logistics, facilities, personnel and funding needed to fulfil that mandate. He argued that government’s continued failure to pay Environmental Service Providers Association (ESPA) members, some of whom operate with expired service agreements, is the fundamental cause of the country’s deepening waste crisis.
Poku-Adusei disclosed that some waste management companies are owed substantial sums by government. Citing Zoomlion Ghana Limited, which he said controls about 70 percent of the market share in Accra, the MP indicated the company alone is owed several hundred million cedis, a debt burden he argued has crippled the company’s ability to continue collecting waste effectively.
He explained that although the waste management service agreement between government and service providers had expired, providers had continued operating in good faith while awaiting formal renewal and retrospective payment. However, he said the absence of any assurance from government that outstanding payments would eventually be honoured has now led some providers to scale back or halt services entirely, worsening the accumulation of refuse in communities.
“The government is not funding the service providers to carry out the services,” he said, stressing that the crisis facing the country is fundamentally one of underfunding rather than a lack of citizen goodwill.
The MP argued that rather than mobilising Ghanaians for a symbolic two-day exercise, government would achieve far more sustainable results by channelling available funds directly to ESPA and other licensed waste management companies to resume and sustain their routine collection services. He called for the immediate renewal of the expired service agreement as a first concrete step, alongside a clear commitment from the government to settle outstanding debts owed to providers.
