Remove this heap of refuse - Kaneshie traders

10/05/08
Story: Musah Yahaya Jafaru
FOODSTUFF sellers at the Kaneshie Market in Accra have appealed to the Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA) to clear the heap of refuse close to the market.
According to the market women, the refuse had been there for the past two weeks.
The refuse, which is on the street close to the Kaneshie Post Office, generates bad odour, with flies hovering over it.
Some of the market women told the Daily Graphic that due to the heap of refuse at the market, coupled with the odour emanating from it, their customers had stopped patronising their foodstuffs.
According to them, the customers had now shifted to the Agbogbloshie Market, a situation which affected their income and general livelihood.
The market women blamed the AMA for not impressing on the contractors to collect the refuse.
They also accused residents of Kaneshie, Bubuashie and Mataheko of continuously dumping refuse into containers which were already full.
The foodstuff sellers said some of the residents dumped refuse on the street during the night.
This reporter saw some people dumping refuse there, in the full glare of the market women, while the women hurled insults at those people.
Alice Mensah, 30, a tomato seller, was bitter that the poor state of the market had driven her customers away, besides the stench she had to contend with.
“We do not sell anything now. The people come, but when they see the refuse, they move away. Some of them go to Agbogbloshie,” she lamented.
“Now some people say if you want to catch a disease come to the Kaneshie Market because of the heap of refuse here,” according to Agnes Maxwell, an onion seller.
When contacted, the Environmental Officer of the Kaneshie Market, Mr Israel Tetteh Aryee, said the contractor, J. Stanley Owusu, had told him that its inability to collect the refuse was due to the breakdown of its vehicles and the fact that the AMA had not settled all its outstanding indebtedness to the company.
Besides, he said, the roads leading to the Oblogo dumping site had gone bad following recent downpours.
“The situation at the market is so discouraging. Sometimes it takes about two weeks before the contractors come in to collect the refuse,” Mr Aryee said dejectedly.
According to him, the market sellers generated 22 tonnes of refuse daily, while the residents of Kaneshie, Bubuashie and Mataheko generated about 66 tonnes daily.
The Managing Director of the Kaneshie Market Complex, Mr Kwaku Kra-Gyamera, said his outfit had held several meetings with the AMA and the contractors on how to solve the sanitation situation at the market.
He said the AMA and the contractors always promised to ensure the regular collection of the refuse and indicated that they started well but failed to sustain the momentum.
On the dumping of refuse by residents, Mr Kra-Gyamera said initially his outfit had rejected that idea but said they later reached a consensus with the AMA that the residents should dump their refuse there, since they did not have refuse dumps in their areas.
Consequently, he said, the contractors increased the number of containers from two to five.
Mr Kra-Gyamera said the worry was that the residents and some market women continued to dump refuse into the containers even when they were filled up.
“The residents bring the refuse in wheelbarrows and Kia trucks in the night to dump it there,” he said.
Besides, he said, the contractors failed to collect the containers on time, allowing the refuse to spill over onto the street.
According to Mr Kra-Gyamera, the situation was compounded because members of the surrounding communities had failed to register with the AMA to have their refuse collected from house-to-house.