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Monday, December 6, 2010

Yesdec/CHF to empower youth into waste management

About 400 youth in the Alajo community have been targeted to go into waste management business, courtesy Yesdec and the Corporative Housing Foundation (CHF).

Dubbed 'Yes Project', the program seeks to focus on four value chain modules in the areas of organic compost plant, tin-film, e-waste and ferrous metals in a six months pilot phase.

About 100 youth would be directly employed in the project that would in turn encourage their peers to venture into the waste management business.

'With this four value chain, we want to create sustainable employment opportunities for the youth within this sub-metro,' said Eugene Pwawole, Value Chain and Business Development Officer of CHF, an American non-governmental organisation (NGO) with funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

The project, which was recently launched in Alajo, a suburb of Accra, would see the youth being trained in the production and marketing of compost, in order to reduce the volume of waste in that community.

'When you look at our solid waste, about 65% of what goes into our landfill are organic, and we have a problem with finding landfill sites. And so, we want to pilot this project in what we call community level compost plant, to reduce the level of volume that goes into the landfill,' noted Pwawole in an interview with The Chronicle.

About 300 houses in the Alajo community are going to be selected for the source separation, according to Ebenezer Adu Appiah, Yesdec Project Coordinator.

The project, he said, would also involve the collection of waste plastic bags, including sachet water bags, and the collection of ferrous metal.

According to Appiah, his outfit, together with Yesdec, a subsidiary of ZoomLion Ghana Limited, would have in place a buy-back center, where the collected waste plastic bags would be bought and sold to recycling companies.

On the issue of ferrous metal, he said the joint venture identified some inefficiencies in the collection of metals, hence their decision to engage the youth in that business.

The project, according to Appiah, was also being implemented in Ga-Mashie in the Asiedu Keteke sub-metro, Nima in the Ayawaso East sub-metro and Avenor in the Okaikoi sub-metro.