The Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA) has voiced strong reservations over the government’s fumigation arrangement with the Jospong Group of Companies, operators of Zoomlion Ghana Limited, citing a lack of transparency and inadequate stakeholder involvement.
Speaking at a meeting with the Parliamentary Select Committee on Sanitation and Water Resources on Monday, April 14, AMA’s Director of Public Health, Florence Kuukyi, expressed concern that many of the fumigation contracts were executed without the input of key personnel within the assemblies.
She said this lack of consultation has made it difficult for the AMA to properly assess or validate reports on the fumigation activities carried out across the metropolis.
Kuukyi called for a comprehensive review of the contract to ensure that future sanitation interventions are implemented with full accountability and collaboration among all relevant agencies.
“Just as the coordinating director rightly said, all these contracts are always signed at the blind side of the implementers. So most of the time, even, you are just there, and they’ll bring you a report. We’ve done this. We’ve done that.
“They don’t involve you in whatever they do. They only bring you a report to sign as a witness. You can decide to sign,” she stated in a report by CitiNewsroom.
She stressed, “You can decide not to sign. But whatever it is, they will be paid. So that is why we are hammering much on the review and the repackaging of the SIP contract so that we, the implementers, actors, will also have a say in it.
“Whatever they are doing, our faces are following them. If they are doing it right, we will know. If they are not doing it right, we will know. It is there. But I have never witnessed one fumigation. That is the issue. But always they bring reports of fumigation that they’ve done.”
