The Informal Waste Workers Association wants the government to engage them on modalities towards regularizing their operations than resorting to a total ban on their activities.
The Greater Accra Regional Co-ordinating Council announced a ban on the activities of tricycle operators within the Central Business District CBD, the Accra Motorway and some parts of Accra in an effort to mitigate traffic congestion and restore orderliness to the streets of Accra.
The Informal Waste Workers who also use tricycles in carting waste to dumping sites by plying principal streets and highways in the capital say the ban will negatively affect their business.
The general secretary of the Association, Max Jumbo said their activities are currently not backed by law, and no bidding agreement between them and the various municipalities yet they are responsible for clearing and carting more than 70 percent of the waste generated in the Greater Accra Region.
“If Greater Accra and Ghana want to be clean, neat, and healthy, let the government sit down with us and give us just eight months and they will never see any plastic waste anywhere. What we are doing now is illegal because we don’t have any agreement with any Municipality but we take more than 70 percent of the waste in Greater Accra and what will happen when we are given the full license to operate?”
He further warned about the dire consequences the ban on their operations will have on public health and the quality of life for their families.
“If we are sacked from the mainstream, Greater Accra is going to be dirty and unhealthy. We cannot stop what we are doing because this is what we do to feed our people and families.”