The Parliamentary Select Committee on Sanitation and Water Resources has expressed its satisfaction with the level of work that has so far gone into the construction of Zoomlion Ghana Limited’s Integrated Recycling and Compost Plant (IRECOP) at Yabram, Dambai, in the Oti Region.
Speaking to the media after its three-day engagement with Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs) in the Volta and Oti Regions from Thursday, 17 to Saturday, 19 September 2026, the Chairman of the Committee, Hon. John Oti Bless, urged the government and other stakeholders to support such initiatives as part of efforts to achieve a cleaner Ghana.
“Government and the various stakeholders must come on board and support this special initiative. Our target is to have a clean Ghana,” he appealed.
Although the facility was only about three years old, it was still undergoing some development, including the completion of portions of its fencing.
Hon. Oti Bless cited Rwanda as an example of a country that has made significant progress in sanitation through the enforcement of clear rules and regulations and greater public compliance.
According to him, one of Ghana’s major sanitation challenges was indiscipline, particularly the indiscriminate disposal of waste.
“The Assemblies must begin to put bye-laws in place and implement and enforce them. That is the only way we can get out of this mess,” he stressed.
He also commended private waste management service providers for their contribution to sanitation, singling out Zoomlion Ghana as one of the major service providers supporting sanitation efforts in the country.
On the need to move beyond waste disposal to recycling, Hon. Oti Bless called for stronger collaboration between government, investors and major sanitation service providers to expand recycling and other sustainable waste management initiatives.
He said the Committee was impressed with the sanitation situation observed particularly in the Volta Region, describing it as one of the cleaner regions visited so far.
“We are impressed with the state of sanitation in the Volta Region. It is the cleanest region. There is no doubt about that,” he said.
He noted that the Committee’s monitoring exercise would continue, to the Bono, Bono East, Ahafo, Ashanti and Eastern Regions expected to be visited next, followed by other regions.
Hon. Oti Bless also encouraged media organisations to use their platforms to educate the public on proper sanitation practices and the importance of maintaining clean communities.
He said indiscriminate disposal of waste could eventually have negative consequences for the people themselves, stressing the need for Ghanaians to understand and adopt better sanitation practices.
Earlier, on Friday, 18th September, 2026, in Ho, the Committee engaged MMDAs in both the Volta and Oti Regions on how they were utilising the 10% sanitation allocation under the District Assembly Common Fund (DACF), including their challenges.
From its interactions with the various DCEs, it emerged that although the 10% was helping, it was not enough to meet the sanitation needs of the MMDAs in both regions.
The District Chief Executive of North Tongu, Victoria Amefadzi Doe Yawa, said the lack of skip containers was undermining effective waste collection in her district. She attributed this to the fact that the 10% was not adequate.
The engagement also revealed that many districts were not incentivising the sweepers they recruit well enough.
For North Tongu, Mrs Doe Yawa disclosed that sweepers were paid between GH¢300 and GH¢350 a month, an amount Chairman Oti Bless described as inadequate, and urged assemblies to motivate their sanitation workers to give of their best.
For other districts, including Central Tongu, Afadzato South, Akatsi North, Ketu North and Adaklu, the lack of an engineered landfill site and a permanent refuse disposal site emerged as a major concern. The representative of the DCE for Central Tongu, Caroline Sefanu Dogbornu, who represented DCE Dodzi Addison Mornyuie, lamented that the absence of a permanent disposal site in the area was not helping their sanitation fight.
