Despite having agreed to the new Accra Metropolitan Assembly's (AMA) refuse collection agreement, the Environmental Service Providers Association (ESPA) has raised concern on certain clauses in the agreement document, and has therefore called on the city authority to review its decision by offering them a permanent contract.

The service providers contend that the new arrangement that seeks to give them the contract after three month probation period was not in their best interest since they needed extra funding to kick-start their work.

"This clause is not fair to us, because besides our outstanding payment due us, we need extra capitalization to kick-start the work. We therefore need a valid and permanent contract that can enable us attract funding from external sources, such as the banks," stated the service providers in a statement signed by its Secretary, Evans Ewudzie Arthur, and released in Accra over the weekend.

It also raised concern over the duration for educating the public on the new arrangement, stressing that the Terms of Reference (TOR) of the tender process does not give a specific time frame to execute the task.

Besides, the AMA, according to the statement, needed time to dislodge its members who are presently collecting fees from the container sites.

With these concerns, the service providers, according to the statement are seeking for a five year contract duration with the probation clause of between six months and one year to enable it execute its mandated task in an efficient manner.

Stressing further on their concerns, the statement also alluded to the fact that AMA's financial responsibility to each contractor was not encouraging, a situation it said went contrary to the Terms of Reference of the tender process.

"The letter of offer also indicated that throughout the period of the contract, the AMA's financial responsibility to each contractor is nil. This means that whether the fees being collected at the sites by the contractor is enough to make him break even or not, the AMA does not care.

"This position, however, is contrary to the content of the terms of reference of the tender process, which did indicate that the client will support contractors for shortfall in revenue mobilization up to about three years on a graduated basis by which time the revenue mobilization by the contractors would have maximized.

This will eventually pave the way for the phasing out of the central container system by the fifth year," noted Mr. Ewudzie in the statement. On the impending problems within the waste management industry, the statement called on the city authority to enforce to the letter the new contract which directs each contractor to move out entirely from its old area to a new one that has been demarcated by the AMA.

It also called on the city authority to review the new approved dumping fees for the new Fee-Based Solid waste collection. Under the new rate, service providers are to pay GH¢12.00 per ton as against GH¢2.00 when the AMA was responsible for payment of central container services at a rate of GH¢10.00.

"Now that we have to struggle to collect our own fees, we are to pay this astronomical rate, which is a combination of both the old service and dumping rates. This is surprising since the AMA has never paid us for our house to house services, and there is no possibility of the AMA increasing the house-to-house rates to the level that can absorb this new high dumping rate," noted Mr. Ewudzie.