Solid Waste Management

The Municipal assembly is to provide good sanitation and waste management within the Municipality. However, the provision of healthy sanitation and waste management has become burdensome to the Municipal Assembly.

Daily 198 tonnes of waste is generated in the Municipal, only 120tonnes (70%) is collected through door-to-door and communal systems (Intervention). The Informal system then takes care of 38 tonnes, which constitutes 25% of the collection coverage. The deficit of 40 metric tonnes (6%) is however partly cleared through the National Sanitation Day exercises.

Total tonnage of waste generated in the city is 3,000 tons per day. Out of this, 2,500 tons is collected daily leaving a backlog of 500tons. The Performance/output of waste collection is 83.33%.

Final Disposal

Currently the Assembly has no engineered landfill for the storage and management of waste. The Assembly relies on Tema Metropolitan Assembly’s Landfill, Nsumia Dump Site, Accra Recycling and Compost Plant and Abokobi dump site for final disposal of waste and also transfer stations close by. In order to reduce the amount of waste to landfills, waste reduction, reuse, recovery and recycling techniques should be promoted

Liquid Waste Management

The ultimate goal of the Assembly in relation to Liquid Waste Management is to improve the well-being and health standards of the citizens within City of Accra. The estimated liquid waste generation in the Municipal stands at about 200 cubic meters per day of which majority goes into septic tanks.

About 15% of the Area, mainly the Dansoman Area and its environs, is served by a piped waterborne sewerage network, also 66% of the Area is served by on-site sanitation facilities in the form of septic tanks and improved pit latrines. The remaining estimated 27% practice open defecation which is not acceptable is found in these areas of the Municipality Gbegbeyise, shiabu, glefe among others.

Greater Accra Metropolitan Area-Sanitation and Water Project (GAMA-SWP): As part of measures to eliminate open defecation and improve on the general sanitation and health of the City, the Assembly is implementing the GAMA-SWP – a project funded by the World Bank. It aims at increasing access to improved Sanitation and Water supply in the GAMA area (for over 250,000 people) with emphasis on low income urban communities, and to strengthen management of environmental sanitation across GAMA.

The project is also meant to improve on sanitation in our basic schools by rehabilitating all existing but broken down toilets in clusters of school across the Municipality.  To achieve the above objective, the Assembly is providing low income households with toilet facilities to the lowest. This is intended to reduce the menace of open defecation.