Regional News of Sunday, 30 September 2012

Source: GNA

Resource assembly members to handle waste management – Presiding Member

Mr. Francis Ehwi Armah, Presiding Member of the Jomoro District Assembly, said members can better manage waste in their respective communities if they were resourced from the metropolitan, municipal and district assemblies (MMDAs) Common Fund.

He said waste management in the districts had increasingly become an issue of major concern which assembly members own it a duty to lead in ensuring its proper disposal.

Mr Ehwi Armah said this when he addressed the second ordinary meeting of the Second Session of the Sixth Jomoro District Assembly at Half Assini.

He said President John Dramani Mahama's recent inauguration of the National Waste Management Taskforce in Accra was aimed at better handling waste and that when deduction were made from the common fund it would help in that direction.

Mr Ehwi Armah said, in his view, when the assembly members were resourced from the Common Fund, they could effectively manage waste in their communities.

“It is upon this premise that I call on the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development to critically look at the funding of waste management from the Common Fund to the assembly members.”

Sources from the assembly indicated that GH?36,000 is deducted each quarter from its share of the Common Fund by the Ministry.

Meanwhile Zoomlion Ghana Limited, which manages the district waste, has for sometime now been unable to do so due to some challenges thus leaving heaps of refuse in some major towns across the district including Half Assini.