GH¢99 Million state money for sanitation vanishes

Some GH¢99 million out of the GH¢400 million realized from the plastic waste levy from 2014 cannot be traced, Sanitation Minister, Kofi Adda has said.

The Minister suggests that the money disappeared during the erstwhile John Mahama government.

“As of September 2016, about GH¢99 million was taken but we cannot account for it, we don’t know where it is. Our government cannot trace the money,” he said.

He made this revelation Wednesday at the second Annual General Meeting of the Environmental Services Providers Association (ESPA).

Mr. Adda says his Ministry has taken new steps to prevent a repeat of the malfeasance.

“…so this year we put in mechanisms in place through the Ministry of Finance to ensure that once that money is collected we make it available for use to support sanitation,” he said.

The revelation follows the demand from the Ghana Plastic Management Association (GPMA) from the government to give them what is due them.

President of GMPA Ebo Botwe highlighted the need for a Legislative Instrument to enable the government to disburse some GH¢700 million that has accrued from the taxes imposed on plastic products from 2011.

The key objective of that fund is to use 50% of the money for recycling involved in the plastic waste management

Sanitation Minister, Kofi Adda

Meanwhile, President of the Environmental Service Providers Association of Ghana (ESPA), Joseph Siaw Agyepong, has attributed Ghana’s waste management challenge to Government’s inability to pay huge debts owed waste management companies.

These monies will enable them to deliver their mandate, he says.

Mr. Siaw-Adjepong said the private sector had invested heavily in sanitation services and built the capacity of its human resource to deal with the sanitation challenge, but stressed that until the government took bold steps to pay outstanding debts to ESPA members to improve their capital base, the war against filth would continue to be a mirage.

“No matter what we do as a country, sanitation will remain a national challenge if the government fails to recapitalize the private sector by paying the huge debts owed service providers,” he said.

The Minister has since assured the service providers of the willingness of the government to pay the money.

“We accept that we owe the service providers, but we will find ways to pay them to ensure that waste management is properly handled,” he said.

 

Source:Myjoyonline