A critical breakdown in waste management, fueled by financial strain and broken machinery at the Sofokrom Landfill in Sekondi, has plunged the Sekondi Takoradi Metropolis, Effia Kwesimintsim Municipal, and Shama Municipal in the Western Region into a deepening sanitation emergency, with tons of uncollected garbage creating hazardous conditions and overwhelming local assemblies.
For several months now, the city has been battling a major developmental crisis; waste management. Every day, an average of 600 metric tonnes of waste is brought to the Sofokrom Landfill site. The landfill site siting on 68-acre land, is the only engineered landfill site serving Sekondi Takoradi metropolis, Effia Kwesimintsim Municipal, and Shama Municipal in the Western Region.
Due to some financial and logistical challenges, the Assembly is unable to effectively manage this landfill site, resulting in the spillover witnessed there.
Currently, all earth-moving equipment used at the site have broken down.
At various disposal sites across the city, refuse is piling up and has remained uncollected for weeks. The stench permeates households, markets, and streets. It is a deadly environmental hazard that requires urgent attention. Even for private waste collectors, getting to dispose of refuse they’ve collected from households at the landfill site is a challenge. They’ve had to spend hours in queues before emptying their buckets.
“The site is already full, and any equipment they bring here breaks down. We spend hours in queues when that happens. Until they clear the refuse, we are stuck here,” says Joseph Eshun, a private waste collector.
“It’s messy over here. We are struggling. We can be here till 6pm before we get a chance to empty our buckets. We need help. We need some machinery here. The entire place is full,” another waste collector added.
The service provider manning the facility used to be paid directly by the Ministry of Local Government; however, the burden has for the past seven months been placed on the coffers of the Sekondi Takoradi Metropolitan Assembly.
On a daily basis, an amount of GH¢7,000 is spent renting a bulldozer to help clear and spread the refuse at the site. Added to this cost is a bill for two barrels of diesel per day.
The Head of Waste Management for the Assembly, Edwin Bonsu, says an annual budget of GH¢12 million is required to effectively operate the landfill site. With no dedicated funding, the A5ssembly’s finances are overwhelmed.
“An annual amount of about GH12 million is needed for operations. We need heavy machinery to work on a daily basis…bulldozers, compactors, excavators, rollers, graders to make the roads accessible during the rainy season.
“And we also need the excavators to cater for the leachate component from the engineered cells,” he said.
The Assembly has already petitioned the Ministry of Local Government, Decentralization & Rural Development and the Ministry of Finance to address this problem.
In the coming weeks, they plan to re-engage the ministries on this matter. While working on this, the Assembly has secured a C40 Cities Finance Facility to redevelop the Sofokrom landfill site to improve waste management in the metropolis.
“It includes upgrading our landfill site into a recycling facility and engaging in more community-led projects so we can equally get more feed from the communities…and extending our sanitation catchment areas,” Mr Bonsu detailed the scope of the project.
In the meantime, the Assembly is receiving support services from the Waste Landfill Site to manage the situation. A number of skip containers have been deployed to some disposal sites, and a fleet of trucks has been released to help evacuate them when they get full.
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