Despite a ban on tricycles carting garbage from using the Accra-Tema Motorway, some waste collectors using such vehicles are still plying the highway to dump waste at the Kpone landfill site.
A week ago, the Greater Accra Regional Minister, Henry Quartey, announced a ban on the use of tricycles popularly known in Ghana as ‘Aboboyaa’ on the Accra-Tema Motorway, effective November 1.
However, most of the tricycle operators said they did not have any alternative route to use.
“I didn’t hear any information from anybody saying we should not take the rubbish to Kpone,” one of the riders said.
“We don’t have a place to pass apart from the highway…if not here, where do we pass to go and dump the refuse,” he added.
Meanwhile, the Informal Waste Workers Union of Ghana, users of tricycle for waste collection, have called on the government to provide waste compactor mobile trucks at vantage points within the Greater Accra Region before implementing the restrictions.
The group earlier on Monday morning gathered at the Awudome cemetery to register their displeasure with the ultimatum issued by the Greater Accra Regional Minister, Henry Quartey.
The union president, Lydia Bamfo, said the ban will render them jobless when alternative means are not put in place by the government.
“We are pleading with the government to make a mini-transfer station for us, or they get us a compacter truck,” she said.
The region’s plan is to have waste transfer sites in every district in the region by February 2020.
Following this, tricycles will be barred from using any major roads. They will be expected to deposit refuse at the waste transfer sites.