ZOOMLION TO BEGIN 24-HOUR REFUSE COLLECTION IN KUMASI (PAGE 29)

A LEADING waste management company, Zoomlion, is to begin a 24-hour citywide evacuation of refuse in Kumasi.
The exercise is meant to clear piled up refuse and consequently improve on sanitation in various parts of the city.
The Ashanti Regional Head of the company, Ms Sharon Quarshie, told the Daily Graphic that the exercise would be sustained because the people of Kumasi deserved what was the best.
She said the current sanitation situation was not the best, and expressed the hope that with the co-operation of the Kumasi Metropolitan Assembly (KMA), Zoomlion would continue to do more to ensure sanity in the city.
Ms Quarshie said Kumasi would not have serious problems with sanitation if the 24-hour refuse collection exercise was done side by side with the door-to-door refuse collection.
She said undertaking refuse collection in the night had a lot of advantages. For instance, she said, in the night, there was less risk of accidents, while the heavy traffic associated with day collection was practically absent.
She said after collecting the refuse, the company would fumigate the refuse collection points.
That, she said, would help control the scent, cut down the spread of mosquitoes, and thus, reduce malarial infections.
Ms Quarshie further said Zoomlion would soon support the management of the waste disposal site at Dompoase, near Kumasi.
The support will be in the form of equipment and other logistics when necessary.
She also spoke about the pilot waste separation project, which the company launched in Kumasi, in collaboration with the Chemical Engineering Department of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), and said the exercise had been completed.
The project sought to sort out household waste for materials that could be recycled.
The regional head said the company was waiting for the results of the pilot project, and when successful, it would move to implement it on a larger scale.
She said the company had now zoned the Ashanti Region into three, each with a supervisor to ensure effective management of waste.