The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is to collaborate with Zeal Environmental Technologies to help efficiently operationalize EPA’s established Laboratory in Takoradi to serve the petroleum industry.
The Executive Director of EPA, Dr. Henry Kwabena Kokofu, said this to Citi News during a working visit to Zeal Environmental Technologies, an indigenous oil and industrial waste management giant in the Western Region.
Dr. Kokofu said Zeal has both the skill, knowledge and requisite machinery to deal with environmental protection issues particularly the waste management as per oil waste, water waste and other solid waste, hence the collaborations.
“I’m quite impressed to be here having seen at first hand. I have read a bit about Zeal but having come down myself and then witnessing what is being done, I’m very much impressed. All is not lost on Ghana’s quest to have a resilient well-protected environment. We have shared some ideas and identified some gray areas where Zeal is already on top of issues. We have asked for collaborations with EPA office in Takoradi and the headquarters. So going forward we have arranged for a more technical meeting that we will operationalize all that we have and will agree on. First on the agenda will be the Laboratory setup of EPA that was set-up for the Hydrocarbons/petrochemicals.”
“Zeal has expressed the interest to collaborate with EPA to help operationalize it and make good use of it. I think it is a good step because it is underutilized and Zeal has identified ways to help us make the Laboratory work efficiently. To add to it, Laboratory work is so key and at the centre of waste management issues particularly such a highly technical area of oil waste,” he added.
The Executive Director of the EPA who is on a Western Regional tour with an EPA delegation in line with its mandate to safeguard and protect the environment said more of such collaborations will follow.
He said Zeal Environmental Technology is a model example of Local Content success story that must be encouraged.
“Zeal is an example of the local company anticipated in the Local Participation and Local Content Law passed to advance. Regrettably, we don’t have much of such in the horizon, but Zeal has shown the way. A purely indigenous company with all that it takes, state-of-the-art technology and skilled Labour being all Ghanaians that provides waste management services in this petroleum industry. So we encourage Zeal to go ahead and do more, especially not doing it alone but trying to bring along some of the small indigenous companies to up their capabilities,” he added.
Dr. Kokofu therefore encouraged Ghanaians investors to help invest in the oil waste management sector to enable Ghana to completely take over the petrochemical industry.
The Chief Executive of Zeal Environmental Technologies, Kweku Ennin, who led the EPA delegation around the plant at Nyankrom in Shama welcomed the collaboration and Zeal is already collaborating with the EPA and other institutions like the University of Cape-Coast on other front therefore committed to pushing the frontiers of oil and industrial waste management in Ghana.
Zeal in addition to its current underutilized capacity is even upgrading with the installation of a new incinerator with a capacity of 1000 kg and can run for 24 hours.
The incinerator which is expected to be operational before mid 2021 will help Zeal serve more clients in the petroleum sector, mining and industry at a lesser cost.
Items that can be incinerated include; hazardous waste, medical waste, chemical sacks, expired chemicals, narcotics, unwholesome foods confiscated by FDA, GRA, EPS and other regulatory bodies.
