The attention of the Ministry of Sanitation and Water Resources (MSWR) has been drawn to a publication by My Publisher 24, an online news portal on the headline above. The news portal attributed the information in the publication to Former President H.E. John Dramani Mahama.
The Ministry hereby states with no equivocation, that no such amount from the World Bank has been allocated to the Ministry of Sanitation and Water Resources to desilt major drains in Accra, under the GARID Project. We would like to present the facts to Ghanaians and hope to lay the matter to rest.
Under the Greater Accra Resilient Integrated Development (GARID) Project, there are three (3) Ministries that handle allocated components. The Ministry of Sanitation and Water Resources is in charge of Component 2, which deals with Solid Waste Management Capacity Improvements, aimed at reducing the amount of solid waste flowing into the primary Odaw channel.
The whole allocation for Component 2 is $ 42.2 million and the Ministry has only spent $5.1million. However the $ 150 million mentioned in the publication, is the additional financing for the whole GARID Project and not for Component 2 which the MSWR is handling.
The requirements contained in Component 2 under the GARID Project are in four sub-components as follows:
- Community-based solid waste management interventions and community campaign
- Waste transfer stations, materials recovery facility, and center of excellence for solid waste management
- Capping of old dump sites, and
- Extending final disposal capacity for the Greater Accra Region
The Ministry supported 17 Metropolitan and Municipal Assemblies in Accra to improve their operational capacity, under the first sub-component mentioned above, with 17 Compaction trucks, 55 Motorbicylces for monitoring and reducing littering,
Motorised sprayers for disinfestation of sanitary sites, markets and drains, and Various Cleaning and cleansing tools such as wheelbarrows, shovels, rakes and personal protective equipment.
Currently, a basin-wide removal of waste hotspots or what is also referred to as tipping points into the Odaw river is ongoing (refuse evacuation for large volumes of waste uncollected at undesignated sites and along the Odaw river channel). There are some completed contracts whilst some are on-going mainly for Litter prevention measures, Detailed Engineering Designs (DED), and Environmental and Social Impact Assessment (ESIA).
The information about the Ministry’s role on the GARID Project is available and the Ministry is ready to assist any individual or group with all the information and details about the GARID Project as they may require.