Members of the Ghana Electronic Service Technicians Association (GESTA) in the Central Region, have called on the Government to as a matter of urgency, put in place a system for the collection and recycling of e-waste in the country.
According to them, the absence of e-waste recycling centres in the country, as well as systems for the collection, transportation, treatment, storage, recovery and disposal of obsolete electronic devices, is hampering sustainable and environmentally sound e-waste management.
The artisans made up of mobile phone, television and radio set repairers, as well as scrap dealers, appealed to officials of Health and Safety Ghana (HESAG) when the entity embarked on an outreach to educate GESTA members on sustainable e-waste management practices.
Speaking at the programme, Alhasan Kassim, Deputy Central Regional Chairman of GESTA, said, “Now that we are talking about improved e-waste management, the government must establish e-waste recycling centres,” which in his view, will make the efforts of HESAG effective.
“Our small shops cannot contain the wastes when they are full; there should be somewhere we can send them. If that is not done, we will have no option than to continue our old ways of disposing of them”, Alhassan Kassim added.
He thus implored his colleagues not to haphazardly dispose of their e-waste while they wait on the government to establish the centres.
A mobile phone repairer, Martin Essouman, also wants the government to show more commitment in ensuring improved e-waste management: “We are very grateful to you for this education, but we pray it is not one of those usual talks. We want the government to show us that they are serious about this he said.”
The Deputy Director of Communications of HESAG, Afedzi Abdullah, noted that e-waste remained unregulated with actors in the informal sector, who are mostly without proper training and education.
He lamented that though the electronic industry undoubtedly was one of the world’s largest and fastest growing manufacturing industries, sustainable management of obsolete electronic devices was the biggest challenge.
“The industry has become a leveraging point of socio-economic and technological growth of developing societies in the past decades, but the magnitude of its consumer-oriented growth combined with rapid product undesirability and technological advances were a new environmental challenge,” Mr. Abdallah Afedzi said.
According to him, the nation is estimated to import about 215,000 tons of EEE annually, out of which 170,000 tons are second-hand goods with about 22,000 tons being a complete waste.
“Despite the fact that a large part of e-waste constituted iron, steel and precious metals such as gold, copper, palladium, silver, platinum, and cobalt, they provided an economic incentive for recycling, he added.
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By: Joseph Ackon-Mensah/citinewsroom.com/Ghana