The Wassa Fiase Traditional Council and the Tarkwa Nsuaem Municipal Assembly (NTMA) are at loggerheads over the pouring of human waste by the latter on land of the former.
Consequently, the Traditional Council has ordered the Assembly to cease, with immediate effect, pouring human waste or excreta on their land. Information available to this file indicates that when the Traditional Council gave the order, the Assembly immediately sent out a three-man delegation to confer with the Council, apparently, to reverse the order.
The Assembly delegation, which conferred with the Traditional Council, included the Coordinating Director, head of the Environment and the Municipal Engineer, but they failed to convince the Council to reverse its decision. The Public Relations Officer of the TNMA, Baby Baffoe, who confirmed the story, added that the Assembly shared the concerns raised by the chiefs.
According to her, the Assembly’s delegation did not challenge or fault the chiefs for their decision to stop the TNMA from pouring liquid waste on their land. This is, because, the explanations the Council gave were reasonable and welcome.
The PRO, however, denied that the council immediately stopped the Assembly from dumping the waste. She explained that the Council gave the Assembly a month to prospect for land elsewhere to relocate the dump site.
The Chief of Akyimpim, Nana Ntsiful I, who gave the order, told The Chronicle in a telephone interview that the decision to stop the Assembly was a collective decision by the Traditional Council. That apart, the Council found the acquisition of the parcel of land as questionable. Since the Assembly begun pouring the human waste on its land in 1989, the Assembly had paid no money to the Council.
Nana said when the Council then asked the Assembly to pay a sum of GH¢50 per a trip of waste, the Assembly responded that it had no money. Consequently, the Council had no option than to stop the Assembly. Nana Ntsiful, however, told The Chronicle that one major reason the Council considered was the unhygienic environmental sanitation at the place the Assembly pours the waste.
According to Nana, it was surprising that the Assembly, knowing the negative health effects from pouring waste on the land, would leave the place in an insanitary condition. He bluntly told this reporter: “In fact, the place was an eyesore and nauseating, and there can be [a] disease outbreak in the near future.” He recounted how the haphazard pouring of waste by the Assembly had spread into streams in the area.
Continuing, Nana Ntsiful said another important factor the Traditional Council had considered in putting an embargo on the pouring of the waste on their soil was the growth in the population of the area. He explained the Akyimpim Community was growing at a fast rate, and gradually, the place of the pouring of the waste was competing for space with the inhabitants.