Your Excellency,
I write with deep respect for your office and with urgency about the health of our nation’s environment and economy. Ghana’s coastlines are among our most treasured assets—central to tourism, fishing livelihoods, and the well-being of coastal communities. Protecting these beaches from pollution is vital, and creating jobs for our youth is equally urgent. I respectfully disagree, however, that adding hundreds of paid beach sweepers to the public payroll is the right path. While well-intentioned, that plan is fiscally unsustainable, environmentally shortsighted, and misaligned with good governance. I urge Your Excellency to consider a different, proven model that cleans our beaches and creates livelihoods *without* ballooning the wage bill.
First, putting more workers on the government payroll now would strain Ghana’s fragile budget. We have lived through the consequences of an over-large wage bill: as Deputy Finance Minister Nyarko Ampem warned, Ghana’s wage bill once “consumed unsustainable portions of government revenue…contributing to fiscal deterioration that required IMF intervention.” Today’s National Budget remains under IMF guidance with strict targets on personnel costs. Another surge of new salaries risks repeating that crisis. To illustrate, analysts calculate that simply hiring all qualified nurses, doctors, and teachers awaiting jobs would cost over GH₵12 billion annually—money that could instead fund roads, schools, or debt reduction. We cannot afford to divert scarce resources into payroll for beach cleaners while our public services—health, education, and others—are still understaffed. In short, piling new salaries onto the civil service would starve investment elsewhere and violate our hard-earned fiscal discipline.
Second, employing sweepers on the government payroll tackles symptoms but not the causes of coastal pollution. Decades of experience and research show that cleanup crews are a temporary fix. As recent environmental scholars note, plastic “cleanup” efforts at beaches are a form of *symptom management* —a short-term mitigation at a local scale—whereas lasting solutions lie upstream at the source of pollution. In Ghana alone we generate roughly 840,000 tonnes of plastic waste annually—yet only about 9.5% of that is recycled. Even if every beach were swept daily, more litter would wash in with the next tide or come down our rivers unless we stop it at origin. Indeed, the US EPA estimates that roughly *80%* *of marine litter comes from land-based sources* due to insufficient waste management. Simply hiring beach cleaners in perpetuity would be like mopping the floor while the tap of plastic pollution remains fully open. We must focus on halting plastic leakage into the environment—not only picking it up after the fact.
Finally, direct government hiring is institutionally misaligned. Sanitation and waste management in Ghana are typically handled through local authorities and private providers, not by creating new civil-service categories. Municipal assemblies routinely contract or concession waste and cleanliness services to companies—for example, to a waste management company—under performance-based agreements, rather than absorb hundreds of sweepers into the national payroll. A concession model would mean the government sets standards and provides oversight, while private firms or community cooperatives hire and manage the workers. In public-private-partnership terminology, a *concession agreement* grants a company the right to provide a service—such as beach cleaning—with the private partner bearing most operational costs, but under rules and targets set by government. Properly structured, this allows for innovation and accountability: the concessionaire earns its revenue by meeting agreed goals, instead of operating as an open-ended, tax-funded program.
*A scalable Ghanaian* alternative: rather than expanding the wage roll, we can launch a concession-based program that creates jobs, keeps beaches clean, and even generates revenue. Here is how it could work in practical terms.
*Designate beach zones as concessions* .The government (through the Environment Ministry or local assemblies) would grant concession contracts for sections of our coastline—perhaps by region or by popular beach—to qualified firms or community cooperatives. Each concessionaire would commit to maintaining their beach in a clean and safe condition. In exchange, they could earn fees or revenue streams (for example, modest levies on beachfront kiosks, payments from visitors, or contracts with hotels). Crucially, the concessionaires hire the beach workers on their own payroll, not the state’s.
*Regulatory oversight and performance targets* . The contracts would specify clear duties (daily litter pickup, waste segregation, etc.) and standards (no visible trash, functioning waste bins, etc.), plus penalties for non-compliance. The government’s role shifts to *enforcement* : issuing fines for illegal dumping, supplying waste-disposal infrastructure, and monitoring concession performance. This is akin to how airport or tourism concessions work—the operator pays for the service and delivers results under government oversight.
*Enlist local entrepreneurs and social enterprises* . A Ghanaian model should emphasize local participation. We can build on homegrown successes: for example, the Daasgift Quality Foundation in Shama trained local entrepreneurs and residents to collect and sell beach plastics to recyclers. Within months their pilot removed over 2.5 tonnes of plastic while villagers earned income from selling the waste. Replicating this, the government could partner with recycling companies—or incentivize new ones—to buy plastic and upcycle it. This creates markets for the waste and helps cover operating costs of cleanup. As more plastics are recovered and value is added locally, beaches stay clean and jobs in recycling and craftsmanship (for example, weaving mats from plastic) grow—all without adding to government salaries.
*Upstream waste control.* To complement concessions, Ghana must tighten regulations on plastic use and waste. We should enforce bans or fees on single-use plastics, require companies to take back packaging, and promote recycling. For example, every plastic sachet sold could include a small eco-levy; bottle deposits can encourage returns; factories must filter plastic effluent. Such *polluter-pays* measures ensure producers and consumers who generate waste share the burden. Research shows that preventing pollutants upstream is far more cost-effective than endless cleanups downstream. In practice, that means shifting cleanup costs from taxpayers to producers and consumers.
*Support for waste pickers* . Nationwide, more than 2,000 informal waste pickers already comb Ghana’s beaches and waterways for recyclables. These men and women are our frontline environmental guardians. Rather than sidelining them, we should integrate and formalize their role. Concession programs can subcontract to cooperatives of waste pickers or provide them with protective gear, training, and fair wages. The World Economic Forum notes that empowering waste collectors with technology and fair prices can yield a win-win of higher incomes and cleaner environments. In short, we incentivize grassroots stewardship rather than duplicating efforts with a new bureaucracy.
Your Excellency, Ghana has already committed to ambitious waste goals—we were the first African partner in the Global Plastic Action Partnership, pledging to be a regional model for plastic management. Let that commitment guide us now. A concession-based, private-sector-led beach-cleaning model is widely regarded as best practice: it aligns incentives correctly, channels investment, and maintains fiscal balance. Many tourist nations succeed this way, and with Ghana’s entrepreneurial spirit we can too.
I urge you to reject any proposal that simply writes more cheques for new sweeping crews. Instead, let us launch a comprehensive strategy: tighten pollution controls at source, empower private and community actors with concession contracts, and invest the savings into recycling infrastructure and education. This approach will clean our coastlines and build a lasting coastal economy—far more effectively than a bloated payroll scheme. Mr President, Ghana’s future generations deserve bold solutions that tackle root causes. By prioritizing sustainable systems over temporary fixes, we can truly achieve clean beaches, good jobs, and fiscal prudence.
Respectfully,
Richard DABLAH
_A Ghanaian Concerned for Environment_
