Residents of Kpone and its surrounding communities living close to the decommissioned Kpone landfill in the Kpone-Katamanso Municipality in the Greater Accra Region are agitating about the health risks the abandoned site is posing to them.
The site, about ten meters away from the main road to Kpone, off the Tema-Aflao stretch, has become a haven for mosquitoes and other dangerous tiny insects that survive on filth.
When the stench from the site becomes pungent, most parts of Kpone are invaded by huge contagious houseflies. The pungent stench can sometimes be smelt from about a thousand meters from the abandoned landfill when the air changes after a downpour.
Albeit the landfill had been decommissioned, refuse is dumped at the site 24/7, consequently, having a dire effect on business owners who have their investments around it.
Business owners told The Chronicle that they have lost many international partnerships to the health-threatening environment.
“Many of us here have lost foreign partners because of this landfill. They (foreign investors) will be very interested in doing business or having a partnership with us, but when they come and see the landfill close to our businesses, they go away and you never hear from them again,” a Chief Executive Officer (CEO) lamented.
In 2023, Mrs Cecilia Abena Dapaah, then the Minister for Water and Sanitation Ministry, announced the closure and the subsequent re-engineering of the landfill into a recreational centre.
Immediately, a huge artificial green carpet was spread to cover the landfill. Sadly, garbage trucks and dustbin tricycles from parts of Accra and volumes of dump tricycles and trucks from Ashaiman and Tema still cart and dump refuse at the site.
A resident recalled, “The Minister (Mrs Dapaah) told us that the re-engineering of the landfill into a recreational centre would commence very soon, and the dumping of refuse would be relocated to a different place. But as we speak, the contractor is not on site, and nothing is being done as promised by the Minister. The facility has rather become too dangerous for us residing around it.”
Another resident recalled what Cecilia Abena Dapaah told the people and the traditional authorities that the project would be completed by August 2023 and would be turned into a recreational park for tourism.
After the decommissioning of the site, a temporary site was allocated for dumping, and another resident told The Chronicle, “Look at the mountain from afar. That is a mountain of refuse at the temporary site, which is now taller than the decommissioned engineered landfill.” The refuse mountain is so tall that trucks and tricycles, popularly known as ‘aboboyaa’ in Ghanaian parlance, struggle to climb to the peak to discharge garbage.
Samuel Pinto, a dustbin tricycle rider, told The Chronicle that daily, he and his colleague riders “fight with our clutches to make it to the top of the refuse mountain. When we burn our clutches during the fight to climb this tall garbage mountain, we discharge the refuse at unrecommended places.
“We think it’s time authorities got us a new place because this temporary site is full.” Sitting in front of the temporary landfill is a Goil Fuel Station and the Supervisor said the station is unable to open its mart and a restaurant because of the flies and stench from the dumpsite.
“Flies share almost everything edible with us in this area. The challenge is about the flies and the way they troop here is unbearable. I tell you that you can’t eat without battling to swat houseflies. We will be glad if authorities can relocate the dumpsite.”
Opposite the landfill is also a container terminal built by the Ghana Ports and Harbours Authority, which is supposed to handle transit cargoes. And even before it starts full operations, some transporters have started complaining about the inconvenience caused by the landfill.
When this paper contacted the Municipal Chief Executive of the Kpone Katamanso Assembly, Samuel Okoe Amanquah, he noted that the decommissioning and re-engineering of the landfill was being handled by Zoomlion, therefore, he declined to comment further.
However, Mr Amanquah indicated that a site for a new landfill for the relocation of the old site had been secured at Shai Hills in the Shai-Osudoku District, and to him, work would soon begin.
Mr Amanquah, the MCE and the 2024 Parliamentary candidate for the New Patriotic Party (NPP) for the Kpone-Katamanso Constituency, blamed some of the companies for establishing their businesses close to the landfill, saying, “Some of these companies came to meet the landfill yet agreed to establish their businesses closer to it. I don’t know why they are now complaining as if they didn’t know the consequences of establishing their businesses there. We have engaged some of them and we will continue to engage them on the way forward.”
Mr Amanquah explained that the landfill problem was huge and could not be solved within a short time by any government, adding, “It’ll take a longer period or offers for this problem to be solved. No government can solve this landfill problem within a short period. We are working on solving it but it won’t be done overnight.”
