Accra, Greater Accra Region, Ghana – Tuesday, April 29, 2025, 7:08 AM GMT – Yaw Frimpong Addo, the Chairman of Parliament’s Select Committee on Environment, Science and Technology, has called for calm and assured the public that the recent controversy surrounding the Youth Employment Agency’s (YEA) sanitation module partnership with Zoomlion Ghana Limited will not negatively affect the country’s environmental sanitation efforts.
His assurances come in response to recent remarks by YEA Chief Executive Malik Basintale, indicating a potential non-renewal of the agency’s waste management contract with Zoomlion in its current form, which has sparked public concern.
According to Chairman Frimpong Addo, the information circulating publicly does not accurately reflect the situation on the ground. He emphasized the urgent need for engagement among stakeholders to clarify the facts surrounding the issues within the sector.
He made these remarks following the Committee’s completion of a tour of the Jospong Group of Company’s waste treatment facilities across four regions of Ghana.
“Let me also emphasize that there are news items out there purporting to be coming from the YEA. That is not wholly true,” he stated, adding that “people should not panic over it because it’s not going to affect the work of environmental sanitation.”
Mr. Frimpong Addo indicated that matters concerning the YEA and its agencies under the waste management module fall within the purview of Parliament. He assured that the Committee will prioritize this issue in its report after completing its tour of the middle belt of Ghana to gather firsthand information on waste management practices.
“The workers there, if the allocations that they are talking about is something that we need to have a second look at, we will discuss it in our report and it will come to the floor of Parliament. Because that is the arena that the representatives of the people meet and discuss debate issues. So, we don’t want this thing to go out there that, look, Ghana is in crisis because 40-something thousand people are going to be laid off and the implications of sanitation…. –Certainly it calls for concern. But we should not panic because it is not something that is outside the domain of Parliament that the people have to resolve,” he reiterated.
The Manso Adubia MP also stressed the importance of collaboration between the government and the private sector in tackling challenges within waste management to effectively protect the environment.
“We just have to sit down with the private sector entity and see how there is that cooperation. It is a cooperation between the private sector and government. So, if there is a problem, we just have to sit down and think through some of the challenges that have resulted into these headlines that we are reading,” he re-emphasized.
During their tour, the Parliamentary Select Committee visited waste treatment plants in the Ashanti Region (including the Kumasi Compost and Recycling Plant, Wastewater Treatment Plant, and Medical Waste Treatment Plant), as well as Integrated Recycling and Compost Plants (IRECOP) in the Western North (Sefwi Wiawso), Bono (Sunyani), and Ahafo (Goaso) regions to assess the current state of waste management infrastructure and operations.
