UN Habitat asked to adopt waste management in urban development
Mr Albert Ankrah, Business Development Manager at Jospong Group, has called on the UN Habitat to incorporate sanitation and waste management into urbanisation policies.
He described sanitation and waste management as one of the key components of urbanisation and urban development, which had always being left out of the agenda.
In an interview at the UN Habitat III Conference with the Ghana News Agency in Quito, Ecuador, Mr Ankrah revealed that cities with no proper sanitation management system were bound to fail, adding that, it was the bane of urban development in most African cities.
He said Zoomlion had developed its own urban development guidelines on sanitation and waste management for Ghana, which was being used for the engineering of landfills sites in the various Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies.
He said the guidelines were also used to established transfer stations to reduce haulage and movement of waste products.
According to him, the volume of waste generated by Accra, Ghana’s capital city is reduced through the transfer stations.
He said the company had also noted the need for periodic distribution of garbage bins throughout the country.
Mr Ankrah said the Company had distributed more than one million waste bins in urban centres throughout the country.
He said Zoomlion has instituted: “The African Institute of Sanitation and Waste Management,” affiliated to the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Kumasi, which trained professionals in sanitation and waste management.
Mr Ankrah said his outfit had held discussions with some African countries and companies who it were partnering to achieve its goals in urban development and urbanisation.
The UN Habitat III Conference is a platform to ratify and adopt the New Urban Agenda, which would focus on Climate Change, protection and public Safety.
The Habitat III, the third conference in line with the bi-decennial cycle (1976, 1996 and 2016) is aimed at invigorating and securing a renewed global political commitment to sustainable urbanization to focus on the implementation of a New Urban Agenda, building on the Habitat Agenda of Istanbul in 1996.
Source: GNA