Ghana's Communications Minister has given hints of the possibility of government enacting legislation to stop the dumping of e-waste into Ghana, in a telephone interview with ghanabusinessnews.com Tuesday April 14, 2009.
Mr. Haruna Iddrisu said, "we have taken a serious view of the situation and we are considering the passing of anti-dumping legislation, particularly of used computers."
According to the minister, most of the computers that arrive in the country have no use. He however, said he has no idea of the amount of e-waste that comes into the country's waste stream.
Mr. Haruna Iddrisu, also told ghanabusinessnews.com that the Communications Ministry is in discussions with the Ministry of Finance "to impose prohibitive tariffs on the importation of used computers into the country."
The fact that Ghana is a major dumping ground for e-waste from the US, Europe and other countries is undisputed, as evidence at the Agbogbloshie scrap yard and the number of used computer shops around the country have shown. The contents of some containers arriving at the Tema harbour have also revealed increasing amounts of e-waste entering the country, but steps towards stemming the ominous tide are slow.
Since April 2008, when the country's Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced the formation of a committee to deal with the situation nothing concrete has happened.
Much of what has happened, have been paper work and tough talk by public officials who appear not to be fully aware of the specific extent of the dumping and its measured effects on the country's environment and human health.
Indeed, much of what has been done in concrete terms in direct relations to the dumping of e-waste into Ghana, have been done by foreign countries.
The European media also, unlike the Ghanaian media has given the situation serious coverage and broadcast.
For instance, the British government is investigating alleged dumping of e-waste into Ghana following media reports and pressure from international and British NGOs and some of its citizens. In February 2009, a 46-year-old South Sussex man was arrested on suspicion of exporting e-waste, the destination country was however, not mentioned. He is due to appear in court in May 2009.
Following that a container full of broken electronics equipment destined to Ghana was arrested at the port of Amsterdam, and a few days later eight men were arrested in connection with dumping e-waste in Ghana. Five of the men arrested are Ghanaians and the other three are citizens of Turkey - these men are currently due for trial.
Moreover, in Ghana one cannot find specific data on how much of the developed world's e-waste comes into the country, because records are simply not kept.
But available data shows that as much as 75% of the 8.7 million tons of e-waste generated in the European Union cannot be accounted for, despite stringent regulations for recycling e-waste. In the US the figure is said to be about 80% or more because the amount of e-waste which is reported for recovery includes some of the e-waste exported to developing countries, according to Greenpeace, the international environmental group.
Ghana's case requires urgent attention, because should the side effects of the cocktail of toxic chemicals in e-waste hit the country, it would be disastrous, considering the fact that the country has no capacity either scientifically or medically to deal with the problem.
Ghana is a signatory to the Basel Convention, the international convention on the control of transboundary movements of hazardous wastes and their disposal. The EU also has the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) regulation to which its member countries subscribe. The WEEE directive stipulates that Information Technology (IT) manufacturers are legally responsible for the safe disposal of their products, and are obliged to ensure all products are disposed of in an environmentally friendly manner themselves or sign up with a government-approved waste-handling firm to do it on their behalf. And under this regulation, recycling companies receive some public funding to collect and properly dispose of e-waste safely.
But it appears some individuals have found loopholes in the system and are exploiting it by conniving with some organisations to collect broken electronics and electrical items for onward shipment to Ghana and other developing countries under the guise of aid. Some even sell these out as secondhand items. The broken items end up being sold to scrap dealers who dismantle and sell the parts, after burning the cables to extract the copper.
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