News:
February 2, 2024
The Ministry of Environment, Science, Technology, and Innovation team leader on E-waste, Dr. Vincent Nartey Kyere has disclosed that the E-waste centre built in Accra would be replicated in the other regions.
According to him they are looking for five more E-waste collection centres in Accra to add up to the existing one to close up the proximity gap; adding that when E-waste is collected from Madina one should not move all the way to Agbogbloshie.
He made this known in an interview on Wednesday, January 31, 2024, when lawmakers on the Committee of Environment Science and Technology as part of their oversight responsibilities toured E-waste collection centres at Agbogbloshie and Atomic Energy.
On the issue of challenges, Dr. Vincent Nartey pointed out that price fluctuation is a matter of concern as the scraps dealers involve in the trade know the trade very well and know what is charged on the international market, hence want same price to affect them and added that the one collection centre in Accra is not enough.
Additionally, there is the need for education as people do not understand the issues of these hazardous materials; so to bring people’s attention to it, we need some kind of serious investment in the sector.
According to him, the project is more on collection of E-waste materials, recycling and disposing of electrical, as well as electronic materials.
“We then look at the final treatment, final recycling and disposal of the items. We started the collection from Agbogbloshie Green Land Facility where we collected the items, waste materials at an incentive amount”. This, he said is contrary to how it was previously handled where people were burning these things or doing some crude application to it.
“And we said at what price will people bring these items so that they do not take it through the crude method? So we started with this incentive. So far when we started we have paid five point six million Ghana cedis to collect almost five million tons of materials.
He stated that there is this small formal sector that has the investment and technology to do proper recycling. However, because they are not able to compete with the informal sector market they do not get the materials. “So the materials collected are given to the formal people assuring them that there are materials. We have done the first fifty tones of materials; once the materials are not useful, we find a way of disposing it”, he added.
After the Agbogbloshie tour the Committee moved to Atomic Energy where a new E-waste facility of about thousand five square meter area has been built which has containers that would expand the collection of E-wastes.
Kwaku Sakyi-Danso/Ghanamps.com