The money DIDN'T go 'down the toilet'

[DrLeftover]

5 Aug

Fredrik Sunesson had high hopes when the first tanker truck unloaded feces from some of Accra’s 4 million residents at his recycling plant in Ghana’s capital. Seventeen months later, those expectations have been dashed.

A combination of red tape and disputes over payments mean Sunesson’s Slamson Ghana Ltd. is running far below capacity, he says. Most of the 140 tankers dump the contents of Accra’s toilets each day into the Gulf of Guinea at a foul-smelling dune known as Lavender Hill. The lagoon nearby is so polluted that scientists says most life-forms can’t survive. The slum nearby has earned the nickname Sodom and Gomorrah.

“It’s a shame for everybody, most of all for the environment and the people of Accra,” Sunesson said.

Despite a series of infrastructure projects backed by foreign donors, Accra doesn’t have a working sewer system, leaving most of its citizens to choose between communal latrines or defecating on open ground. That’s contaminating the city’s groundwater, according to the World Bank, and almost 700 people have contracted cholera since June. The failure to maintain existing treatment plants has rendered them unusable, while a lack of political will means there’s little prospect of any immediate improvement.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-08-05/feces-clogged-shore-shows-africa-infrastructure-failings.html