Lavender Fecal Treatment Facilities Risk Shutdown

An amount of GH₵3m is required every month to effectively manage the Lavender Fecal Treatment Plant that treats close to 18,000 liquids and 26,000 solid waste in Accra.

Haidar Said, Managing Director of the Sewerage Systems Ghana Limited, operators of the facility, who disclosed this said the company has been operating without a valid contract and funding since it began operations early 2017.

He has therefore appealed to government to assist in the contractual process since the company risk being closed down due to funding challenges.

“I hope we will not get to the shutting down of the facility, but we just have to sound our voice to the decision makers and leaders of this country.

“As I said earlier, we can operate on our own, using our own money for a certain period of time, after that I don’t expect ECG to give us free electricity, or staff to work without salaries or equipment to be replaced free of charge. We want to find a solution to keep this place running”, he said.

The disclosure was made when the Local Government Commitment of Parliament paid an urgent working visit to the plant site [Mudor treatment plant] in Accra to ascertain the state of affairs.

Mr. Said also explained that waste water treatment involves a biological process which takes six to eight months to mature, stating “When we finished the construction of the facility we couldn’t keep it ideal, we had to start building that process and we have been using our own resources to do that since January 2017”.

The facility treats waste water from Flagstaff House, Parliament House, Cantonments, Ministries, Korle-bu and other environs in the capital.

Acting chairman of the Local Government Committee of Parliament, Ameyaw Kyeremeh indicated that Parliament would take steps to ensure a proper contract is signed in order to keep the operations of the place running for the benefit of Ghanaians.

He also stated that a shutdown of the Mudor facility would make Accra a messy place to live.

By: Christian Kpesese/ thePublisher