The Mayor of Kumasi, Richard Ofori Agyemang Boadi, has warned that the city’s only landfill site could be completely filled within the next 14 to 16 months unless urgent funding is secured to expand the facility.

He disclosed that an estimated €6 million is required to construct two additional landfill cells, cautioning that failure to mobilise the funds could leave the Ashanti Regional capital without a designated waste disposal site and further deepen its sanitation challenges.

The Mayor attributed the growing pressure on the landfill partly to the activities of seven other Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs) in the Ashanti Region, which dispose of their waste at the Kumasi Metropolitan Assembly (KMA) landfill without contributing to its upkeep or expansion.

Speaking at a media engagement in Kumasi on Thursday, January 15, Mr. Ofori Agyemang Boadi said the Assembly was urgently engaging the central government to draw attention to the gravity of the situation and secure the needed funding to avert a potential collapse of waste management in the metropolis.

“As we speak, within the next 14 to 16 months, if we are unable to construct two new cells, the site will be full, and we will have nowhere to dispose of our waste,” he said.

“We need about six million euros to undertake the construction, and we are working hard to get central government to appreciate the enormity of the task ahead.”

He expressed optimism that ongoing engagements would yield results before the landfill reaches full capacity.

“We are knocking on doors and pushing. We believe that before the space is exhausted, support will come for us to construct at least one or two new cells so that the situation does not get out of hand,” he added.

The Mayor also acknowledged that sanitation in Kumasi has remained a major challenge, admitting that some measures introduced under the previous administration inadvertently worsened the filth situation in parts of the city.

In a bid to improve cleanliness, the KMA has announced a change in its cleaning regime, with street sweepers set to move from midnight operations to dawn cleaning from February 1.

Mr. Ofori Agyemang Boadi explained that the shift is intended to keep streets clean into the morning and prevent areas cleaned overnight from becoming dirty again by daybreak.