Chief Executive Officer of Waste Care Associates, Lukman Salifu, has called on metropolitan, municipal and district assemblies to establish what has happened to land originally reserved for sanitary sites in their communities.

The public health engineering expert said an audit of existing community layouts could help assemblies identify available sites, assess encroachment and determine whether occupied land could be legally recovered for waste management facilities.

His call follows Local Government Minister Mahama Ayarigah’s directive for assemblies to provide one acre of land for waste transfer stations and identify land for landfill development.

Speaking in an interview on JoyFM's SMS on Monday, 5 October, Mr Salifu questioned the fate of sanitary sites incorporated into earlier community plans.

“All those original sanitary sites that were built on our layouts are still there. If they are not there, what has happened to them?” he asked.

He identified encroachment as an issue assemblies needed to examine, adding that the possibility of legally recovering affected sites should form part of the assessment.

“What those assemblies need to do is to do a great infrastructure audit,” he said.

Mr Salifu explained that setting aside land for sanitation facilities was an established planning practice. He cited the Town and Country Planning Ordinance of 1945, which, according to him, provided for sanitary sites in communities.

He therefore viewed the minister’s proposal as an opportunity to revisit that approach and assess whether the designated spaces could still serve their intended purpose.

“I think what the minister is saying is not very different from what has been on our statutes,” he said.

According to Mr Salifu, a previous study had identified 49 sanitary sites, providing a starting point for assemblies to investigate their current status.

“There’s a study that was done and 49 of such sites were already identified. So I think that the assemblies can quickly go back and do an audit, as I said, to see whether they are available,” he stated.

He acknowledged that some assemblies might struggle to secure suitable land where designated sites had been occupied and could not be recovered. In such cases, he said, alternative arrangements would be necessary.

Mr Salifu also explained that waste transfer facilities could take different forms, from communal container sites where some sorting occurs to larger stations that consolidate waste for onward transportation.

He supported separating organic and inorganic waste at household level through a two-bin system, saying this could improve treatment options and support energy recovery.

While maintaining that Ghana still needed landfills alongside modern waste treatment technologies, he urged Accra to give greater attention to waste-to-energy solutions.

“I think we lost our way a bit, but it’s good to go back and build from the ground,” he said.