Tema: Mr Joshua Teye Agudah, the Assemblyman for the Dade Agbo electoral area in the Tema Metropolis, has called on the government to reassign portions of the Zoomlion sanitation contract to assembly members.
According to Ghana News Agency, the contract between the government of Ghana and Zoomlion Ghana Limited had recently come under scrutiny, generating public discussion. Issues with the contracts that had been criticised cover alleged overpayments and unexecuted ones, as well as discrepancies in workers’ compensation.
Mr Agudah, in an interview, stated that Mr Malik Basintale, the Acting Chief Executive Officer of the Youth Employment Agency (YEA), should reassign some portions of the contracts to the metropolitan, municipal, and district chief executives (MMDCEs) to be given to assembly members and unit committee members. He said this in reaction to Mr Basintale’s declaration not to renew the existing sanitation contract with Zoomlion Ghana Limited, if the current wage structure for sanitation workers remained unchanged. He criticised the current arrangement, where workers received GHS250 monthly, while Zoomlion retained GHS600 as management fees from the GHS850 allocated per worker, describing it as exploitative and unjust.
Mr Agudah proposed that portions such as street cleaning and drainage desilting could be handled by the assembly members, who would engage community members to take up such works in their electoral area. ‘The majority of the assembly members cannot work under any company due to the pressure and problems in our communities, and we are less empowered in the area of sanitation; this will do us good and the country as a whole,’ he expressed.
He added that they could supervise the work and ensure fair pay because they are community members and sanitation agents.
