By Nana Kofi Barfour | nbobonsu@gmail.com
Imagine a humid Monday morning in Accra. A young man named Joseph stands in the middle of UTC, Accra Central, holding a broom almost taller than himself. After two years of unemployment, he now earns a daily income under the Accra Metropolitan Assembly’s (AMA) new GH¢100-a-day street sweeping initiative. The money is good—but for how long? His uncertainty mirrors Ghana’s broader dilemma: a country unwilling to confront the sustainability of its public-sector sanitation policies.
A few months before AMA announced its sweeping initiative, the Youth Employment Authority (YEA) quietly proposed a 300 per cent increase in allowances for beneficiaries under the Sanitation Module—from GH¢258 to over GH¢750. This proposal followed YEA’s suspension of its contract with Zoomlion Ghana Limited, a move justified by claims of dissatisfaction with the allowance arrangements for workers. Ironically, this very decision exposed an uncomfortable truth: the state itself struggled to sustainably fund a GH¢258 allowance—an allowance Zoomlion had successfully operated under for years. The state still owes millions to both Zoomlion and module beneficiaries.
This raises a critical question: If government agencies struggled to maintain GH¢258 sustainably, how does AMA intend to sustain GH¢3,000 monthly per worker under its GH¢100-a-day model? The answer appears rooted more in political optics than in sound urban management planning.
A Programme Designed for Optics, Not Outcomes
At first glance, AMA’s initiative seems compassionate. It provides unemployed youth with instant income, creating a favourable public narrative. Social media will soon be filled with videos of young workers sweeping ceremonial roads—a powerful political image. Yet the sustainability is glaringly absent. This is political theatre dressed as policy.
Sanitation is one of the most infrastructure-intensive responsibilities in urban governance. No modern city relies solely on mass manual labour. Sustainable cleanliness requires transfer stations, trucks, recycling plants, mechanised sweepers, structured supervision, and predictable financing. AMA’s model prioritises wages over systems, representing a classic example of a policy built for short-term applause rather than long-term capacity building.
Zoomlion: A Structured System Undervalued
Despite criticism over alleged opacity, political ties, and beneficiary remuneration, Zoomlion provided something AMA and YEA’s model currently cannot: a scalable, nationwide sanitation infrastructure.
Zoomlion has invested in hundreds of mechanised sweepers, thousands of collection trucks, recycling centres, regional depots, and trained supervisors. The GH¢258 paid to beneficiaries was only a tiny portion of a larger operational cost. Zoomlion’s contract cost absorbed fuel, truck maintenance, repairs, uniforms, medical support, and waste carting. It was never a mere wage contract—it was a full sanitation operations system.
Critics focused on the GH¢258 allowance but ignored the underlying machinery and investments Zoomlion carried—costs the state cannot replicate without massive capital expenditure. YEA’s proposed 300% increase is, indirectly, an admission that Zoomlion was never the financial burden portrayed by political narratives.
The Costly Reality of AMA’s Wage-Heavy Approach
Let us follow the arithmetic. Paying GH¢100 per worker daily amounts to GH¢3,000 monthly. Deploying 1,000 workers will cost GH¢3 million every month. Accra needs thousands more to cover all districts, meaning a wage bill exceeding GH¢9 million monthly—with no machinery, no trucks, no fuel, no PPE, and no logistics included.
This is not a sanitation model—it is a political employment scheme disguised as an operational intervention. If the state struggled with GH¢258, how does AMA sustain GH¢3,000? Clearly, the financial logic is weak. Ghana risks entangling itself in a budgetary trap where political optics overshadow operational realities.
Political Symbolism at the Expense of Functionality
The suspension of Zoomlion’s contract represents political symbolism rather than technical reasoning. A functional system has been disrupted not because a superior alternative exists, but because political narratives demanded it. Effective sanitation requires capital investment in trucks, transfer stations, mechanised sweepers, recycling plants, and long-term maintenance—not just wage increases.
Ending Zoomlion’s contract satisfies political sentiments but dismantles an ecosystem the state is not equipped to replace. It is a short-term political victory that risks long-term systemic failure.
The Dangerous Economics of Reinventing the Wheel
Zoomlion operated with predictable, amortised costs. The company carried the burden of capital-intensive operations. In contrast, AMA and YEA’s approach builds a ballooning payroll without creating any physical assets. The city may soon measure sanitation not by cleanliness but by how many people are being paid daily to sweep.
Replacing mechanisation with politically motivated mass labour is a dangerous gamble that Accra may learn to regret. Every Ghana cedi spent on temporary political goodwill is a cedi diverted from long-term urban resilience, infrastructure, and systemic development.
Ghana needs policy-making grounded in sustainability, not in populism. Infrastructure, not sentiment, keeps a city clean. When politics replaces engineering, the results are predictable—and costly.
Politically Convenient, Economically Unsustainable
The contradictions are striking. Government suspended Zoomlion over claims that GH¢258 was inadequate. YEA later admits GH¢258 was indeed insufficient. Yet AMA is now offering ten times that amount, without any machinery, systems, or logistics to support it.
The debate has focused only on wages while ignoring mechanisation, technology, logistics, cost amortisation, and supervision—key pillars of any functional sanitation system.
Despite its flaws, Zoomlion offered continuity, infrastructure, national reach, and mechanisation. AMA’s programme offers wages and applause. In a city where sanitation is a structural challenge, systems—not symbolism—must lead policy.
If AMA’s initiative collapses, as current evidence suggests it might, Accra could face an even dirtier environment, heavier financial burdens, and a political backlash with far-reaching consequences.
Follow AfricaLiveNews
Facebook: https://facebook.com/africalivenews
Twitter/X: https://x.com/africalivenews2
Instagram: https://instagram.com/africalivenews
