Accra Mayor Mohammed Adjei Sowah has decried the city authority’s lack of control over the controversial waste management contract with Zoomlion company Ltd.

He wants the contract, which is replicated across all metropolitan, municipal and district assemblies in Ghana, amended. It will allow his office to properly supervise waste collection.

The government has entered into several contracts with Jospong Group of Companies over sanitation. There is a contract for collecting the waste, a seperate one for disposing the waste, another for managing the waste disposal sites and fumigating public places.

In each of these contracts, monies in millions allocated to metropolitan, municipal and district assemblies are deducted at source, the Office of Common Fund Administrator and collectively paid to his companies.

Assembly members have complained to JoyNews in the documentary ‘Robbing the Assemblies’, despite the payments the work is shoddily done. In some cases, Assemblies have hired extra sanitation workers to do a job contracted to Zoomlion.

The Accra Mayor confirmed the city also hires such extra hands to keep the city clean. But he would not call for the cancellation of the Zoomlion contract as urged by some assembly members who say the MMDAs are better placed to clean up their localities.

Mohammed Adjei Sowah argued, whether cleaning services revert to the assemblies or remain privatised, the critical denominator would still be supervision.

Under the current arrangement, Assemblies don’t control whether Zoomlion gets paid whether or not the work gets done.

Adjei Sowah said there was no clarity on the role of MMDAs in the execution of the Zoomlion sanitation contract.

“What we have not done is to structure the arrangement properly” he said to buttress his call for amendments to empower local authorities to properly supervise Zoomlion’s work.