By Mildred Siabi-Mensah, GNA
Takoradi, Aug. 21, GNA – The Regional Policy
Round Table for the European Union-Funded Project on E-waste Management in
Ghana (E-MAGIN) has begun the
consolidation of ideas on collection centres and formalizing e-waste activities
in the informal sector.
The European Union funded project on
(E-MAGIN) would engage with regional decision makers from Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA), Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies
(MMDAs) and other key stakeholders to discuss challenges and solutions to
establishing collection centres and formalising the informal sector businesses
in e-waste management in Ghana.
Since the introduction of Act 917, LI250 and
the Technical Guidelines for Environmentally Sound E-Waste Management between
2016 and 2018, the Ghana government had sought to tackle the country’s growing
amount of waste from electrical and electronic equipment.
Currently, the vast majority of the Ghana’s
e-waste was collected, dismantled and recycled by a wide-spread informal
economy, which tends to disregard standards for environment, health and safety.
Mr Lambert Faabeloun, Director of Ghana
National Cleaner Production Centre, on Ghana’s National e-Waste Management
Scheme, told the Ghana News Agency that practices being carried out currently
by most informal sector businesses included; open burning of cables, draining
of lead-acid batteries, crushing of cathode ray tubes (CRT) contained in
monitors.
“These activities often lead to
considerable environmental pollution and had dire consequences on the general
public as well as the workers in the sector who were directly exposed to the
heavy metals and toxins contained in them.”
The indiscriminate dismantling and recycling
was largely carried out at Agbogbloshie and other places in Ghana.
He stated that in order to curb the
environmental pollution and reduce the negative impact of the activities in the
informal e-waste sector on human health, practical strategies would have to be
taken in order to address the problems on a national scale.
The swift enforcement of Act 917, LI 2250
and the Technical Guidelines across other regions beyond the Agbogbloshie scrap
yard was imperative to ending the menace, he added.
The E-MAGIN Policy Round Table Dialogues, he
added formed part of a holistic intervention to sensitize the various
stakeholders on the enforcement of Act 917, LI2250 and the Technical
Guidelines.
Already, the E-MAGIN project had engaged
with the Eastern and Volta Regions respectively to identify common challenges,
potential solutions and required resources for the establishment of collection
centres and the process of formalisation of the informal e-waste economy.
The policy round tables would inform the
formulation of recommendations for local decision makers from EPA and MMDAs to be
developed into policy briefs upon completion of the consultation process.
The E-MAGIN project is implemented by
lead-organisation, University of Cape Coast together with Ghana National
Cleaner Production Centre, City Waste Recycling Limited and Adelphi, Germany.
It is financed by the European Union under
the SWITCH Africa Green programme and its implementation is from January 2018
until December 2021.
The project released its first flag-ship
report titled “Money Dey for Borla” which was based on extensive
in-field research and provides a comprehensive overview of e-waste in the
country.
GNA
