The Jospong Group of Companies has called on journalists to intensify investigations into the financial and contractual arrangements governing Ghana’s waste management industry, saying greater transparency is essential to improving sanitation services and ensuring accountability.
Betty Brown Nyadu, Group Head for Government Relations at the Environment and Sanitation Processing Cluster of the Jospong Group, said media coverage of sanitation should extend beyond visible waste and environmental challenges to examine the financial, policy and institutional decisions influencing service delivery.
She made the call at the opening of a two-day workshop for members of the Parliamentary Press Corps.
Ms. Nyadu said effective waste management was central to environmental protection, public health, and economic development, warning that poor handling of waste could contaminate water bodies, degrade land, spread diseases, and worsen air pollution through open burning.
Beyond the environmental consequences, she said, inadequate waste management imposes significant economic costs on the country.
Ms. Nyadu further observed that Ghana was missing economic opportunities by failing to adequately recover, recycle, and reuse discarded materials that could otherwise be transformed into valuable resources.
“Waste, therefore, is not simply something to be collected and discarded. It is a development challenge with environmental, social, and economic consequences,” she said.
The Jospong Group executive urged journalists to investigate whether funding for waste management was sufficient to meet the country’s sanitation needs and whether service contracts and pricing structures accurately reflected the cost of delivering the required services.
She identified delayed payments to service providers, access to equipment and infrastructure, the capacity of local authorities, and coordination among public institutions as areas requiring closer media scrutiny.
She also encouraged journalists to assess whether Ghana’s policy framework created favourable conditions for private-sector investment and whether collected waste was being effectively recycled, composted, or converted into useful products.
According to Ms. Nyadu, inadequate financing can weaken the entire waste management chain, resulting in unpaid obligations, postponed maintenance, equipment shortages, and reduced investment in new facilities.
Such challenges, she warned, could undermine service delivery and threaten the long-term sustainability of sanitation systems.
Ms. Nyadu stressed that scrutiny of waste management costs should be accompanied by a commitment to transparency and accountability, particularly in determining the prices charged for sanitation services.
“Advocating fair pricing does not mean defending every price charged by a service provider. It means defending a transparent, evidence-based, and accountable pricing system that reflects the genuine cost of delivering the required service whilst protecting public interest,” she said.
