Ghana has to start considering waste one of the country’s vital natural resources as part of its development drive, Chief Executive Officer of Zoomlion Ghana Limited, Joseph Siaw Agyepong has said.
Mr Siaw Agyepong, who gave the advice on Thursday, said waste is the only resource that is picked freely on the ground without any tedious mining.
He added that waste is the only natural resource that has an unlimited supply and which the country can make millions of cedis from.
“Waste has to be looked at today in a way that will allow Ghana to make a lot of fortune. In Ghana, we have so many natural resources such as gold, diamond, oil, cocoa among others. Today God is telling us to add waste is one of the resources he created for us. I want to plead with government to add waste as one of the natural resources.”
“Compare waste to oil and you’ll see the difference. When you want to extract gold, you need so much money and equipment to extract the gold from the ground. The gold may even get finished whereas with waste, you need little resources and waste cannot be exhausted. If you want to extract oil, you need a lot of billions of dollars to be able to dig so many meters into the ground, but you don’t need such to extract waste and you will also have more waste all the time. So when you compare waste with some of the natural resources you will realize that waste has value,” he added.
Mr. Agyepong made the call during the launch of a sanitation campaign being spearheaded by Zoomlion and the Church of Pentecost.
The campaign is themed: “Environmental care, my responsibility.”
The Zoomlion boss said other countries like Kigali and Mauritius have capitalized on waste management to develop.
“Some countries focus on waste as a natural resource and it has changed their fortunes. Countries like Rwanda are doing so. We all know that they experienced genocide, but now everyone in the world is acknowledging Kigali as a beautiful city in the world. Ghana has been ranked as one of the dirtiest countries. Mauritius does not have some of our natural resources but they have developed because they treated waste as a natural resource,” he added.
Per the campaign, members of the Church of Pentecost and staff of Zoomlion are to organize periodic clean-up exercises, hold seminars on sanitation, distribute waste bins among other activities in ensuring a clean environment.
The launch of the sanitation campaign comes on the back of President Nana Akufo-Addo’s promise to make Accra the cleanest city in Africa before the end of his tenure.
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By: Godwin Akweiteh Allotey | citinewsroom.com | Ghana
Follow @AlloteyGodwin
