Tourism Authority targets GH₵ 8million from Tourism Levy

Although the implementation of theTourism Levy is still in the bud, MaxwellAdombila Akalaare reports that the levy could serve as a cash cow for the development of the local tourism industry if implemented properly


REVENUES from the Tourism Levy would amount to over GH₵ 8million by October this year,estimates from the Ghana Tourism Authority (GTA) has shown.
The estimated amount is expected to come from some 457 star-rated hotels – hotelswith exceptional services and facilities beyond the normal bed and breakfast – identifiednation-wide.
Thedeputy CEO of the Tourism Authority, Mr Samson Donkor disclosed this in aninterview.
He told the GRAPHIC BUSINESS in Accra that the authority has since October 1, 2012– when the levy took off – to January 8 this year collected GH₵240,254 from 38of such hotels.
Those hotels have so far complied with the collection and payment requirements of thelevy, Mr Donkor added.
The Tourism Levy is one per cent of a person’s total expenditure at a tourismenterprise such as a hotel, conference center, beach, drinking spot amongothers. It is to be collected by the operators of the enterprise in questionand later forwarded to the GTA, the regulator of the local tourism industry.
Although 273 star-rated hotels have so far registered to collect the levy, the deputyCEO at the Tourism Authority said only 38 of them have dully complied with thecollection.
Theauthority is currently using persuasion and dialogue to get the rest to complydespite having the power to prosecute the defaulters, Mr Donkor said.
“Itis early days yet and we don’t want to rush into applying sanctions. We want toproceed with the implementation gradually so that we can get every stakeholderto buy into it,” he explained.
“But if we are able to get the rest on board, our estimates show that in three months’time, we should be able to get GH₵ 3million.”
“And by October this year – one year into the implementation – that figure should rise to GH₵ 8million or GH₵ 9million,” he added.
Further estimates, he said, showed that the star-rated facilities would account for morethan 80 per cent of the total amount to be collected from the levy hence theauthority’s resolve to deal with them first and tactically.
Hospitalityservice providers such as hotels, conference centers, beach operators andrestaurants which are affected by the levy are to register with the GTA toenable them deduct the necessary amount from their patrons’ expenses and later payit into a common account, the Tourism Levy Account.
Thedeputy CEO explained that the authority selected the Agriculture DevelopmentBank (ADB) as the receiving bank to receive all payments arising from the levy.
Consequently,Mr Donkor said the that special account at the ADB has been shared with allfacilities registered to collect the levy on GTA’s behalf.
Eachregistered facility is, however, given a distinct number with which it uses tomake payments into the account, the deputy CEO said.
“Thesystem is such that we can sit here (referring to GTA’s offices) and monitorwho is making payments and who is not,” Mr Donkor said.
Onif the authority intends bringing more banks to receive the levy on its behalf,the deputy CEO answered in the negative, explaining that “we have been advised thatif we spread it, it will not accumulate enough interest for us.”
Thelevy is one of the sources of funding to the newly created Tourism DevelopmentFund captured in the revised Tourism Act, 2011, (Act 817).
According to the act, monies from the fund would beused for the marketing, promotion and development of tourist sites and relatedinfrastructure, building the capacity of stakeholders in the sector and fundingof research works in tourism among others.
Although the implementation of the levy wasenvisaged to come with some resistance from hospitality service providers andthe general public, the deputy CEO of the Tourism Authority said the affectedinstitutions have so far cooperated fully.
“Response wise, I don’t think we’ve had a lot ofdifficulty. The hotels are familiar with a levy like this because it is done inadvance countries where branches of these hotels are located.”
“It is the lower market that will have a problemwith it,” Mr Donkor said, in reference drinking spots, restaurants, beaches andthe likes.
He called on the relevant stakeholders to cooperatewith the authority in easing the challenges associated with the implementationand collection process, noting that “this levy could not have come at a bettertime.”
“If we are able to make it work, it will helpdevelop the sector and all will benefit,” Dr Donkor said.
While commending the logic behind the introductionof the levy, the General Manager of the Coconut Grove Regency Hotel in Accra,Mr Ralph Ayitey, said the Tourism Authority ought to use money accruing fromthe levy to develop the sector instead of limiting it to the institution.
“For me as a manager, I’m ok with it. The problem,however, is what will the money be used for?”
“The Tourism Authority should not see it as a fundfor them to use in developing themselves to the neglect of key things such ashuman resource development, provision of access roads to tourist sites andconstant electricity and water supply to hotels,” Mr Ayitey said.GB

Thirst in the midst of abundance?

This water has been gushing out of a burst pipeline at Kwashieman in Accra for more than a week now.
Attempts by the residents, including this reporter, to get officials of the Ghana Urban Water Company Limited (GUWCL) to patch the leakage failed as they would either not answer the calls or promise to come only to fail.
And this is not the first time. Similar leakages and bursts in the present and nearby pipelines have occurred more than five separate times only in this year.
But while this treated water waste into gutters and subsequently muddy nearby areas, thousands of people, including some neighbours of the burst pipelines, continue to live without water.
Some of those neighbours are now relying on the bubbling water from the ground to meet their individual water needs as they still struggle to cope with life in the national capital without a stable source of water for domestic consumption.
Is this not a clear sign of thirst in the midst of abundance?
There could be enough water for all if only the authorities in charge of this life-anchor resource acted with a sense of responsiveness.
Picture: MAXWELL ADOMBILA AKALAARE

Trashes for cash - Innovative way of dealing with plastic waste

A social enterprise with interest in protecting the environment is making real cash from trashes. Maxwell Adombila Akalaare writes on how the innovative skills of the enterprise is endearing used sachet water bags and other plastic materials


On daily basis, over 60 self-motivated workers of the Trashy Bags Project, a social enterprise, often gather at the ground floor of a one storey building at Dzorwulo in Accra washing, disinfecting, drying and stitching flatten pieces of used sachet water bags and other plastic waste into nice bags for sale.

They have been doing that since 2008 and have so far collected and sewed over 30 million bags of sachet water into some 350 assorted types of shopping, travelling and school bags, laptop, ipad and tablet sleeves among others.

With 70 pieces of the plastic sachet water at hand, employees of the venture are able to make a shopping bag which, when not in use, could be folded into a lady’s purse. But when ready for shopping, the recycled material could carry as much as 20 kilos of materials.

The group’s source of motivation, according to the Director of Projects at Trashy Bags, Mr Elvis Aboluah, is their individual desire to clean the environment using an innovative strategy that returns some cash to the enterprise and those engaged in particular.

“We realised that it is not that simple telling people not to litter. But once they are made to understand that there is value in gathering plastics rather than throwing them around, then the tendency is that those people will stop littering.”

“That was the whole idea behind Trashy Bags Project,” Mr Aboluah, 36, told the GRAPHIC BUSINESS in Accra.

And that has worked, thanks to the novelty of Mr Stuart Gold, a British volunteer who doubles as an advocate of the environment.

Prior to coming out with his Trashy Bags Project, Mr Gold was championing a climate change initiative titled ‘Stop Killing Us.’ The momentum on that project has since dropped as Mr Gold and his team shifts focus from educating people to preserve the environment to giving them an economic opportunity to gather plastic litter for cash or at best, stop littering.

The plastic menace

In the early 1990s through to the 2000s, many households that owed refrigerators in the country took to the bagging and selling of iced water in plain oblong plastics to its teeming fans nation-wide.

Although the idea made chilled water readily available to the low and middle income earners, it sparked an environmental problem nation-wide as most people often threw the plastics indiscriminately without regard to the fact that they take approximately 100 years to biodegrade.

Although many thought the phasing out of the iced water which was followed by the introduction of the 500 millilitre bagged water would help reduce the plastic mess, it has rather added on to the extent of complicating the problem.

Currently, Trashy Bags estimate that one out of every two Ghanaians take sachet water daily and that brings the estimated daily consumption of the product to 14 million. About 25 million people currently live in the country, according to the 2010 Population and Housing Census.

Thus, over 14 million pieces of sachet water bags find their way out daily, most of which are left in the open.

Although information on plastic waste recycling in the country is scanty, the Trashy Bags Project said about two per cent of the plastic consumed is recycled. “What happens to the remaining 98 per cent,” the enterprise asked on its website.

In an apparent response, Mr Aboluah said “that is why there is the need for a new mind set towards littering in this country. What most people do not know is that these plastics take more than 100 years to biodegrade, and by then, they would have caused a lot of harm to the environment,” he added.

Rescuing a million to produce millions

Although the raw material for Trashy Bags’ products is everywhere, getting them is challenging as most people shy from collecting or gathering plastic sachet bags. Many people are used to littering, a challenge the Trashy Bags Project is fighting to reduce.

The Project Director said his outfit currently pays GH¢0.70 for every kilo (120 pieces) of used plastic sachet water bags, an amount he said has motivated many people to pick and gather plastic waste for the enterprise.

“When we started, it was difficult getting the materials but that is no longer the case. We now get more than enough because, gradually, people are beginning to realise the economic value of used plastic sachet bags. So, instead of littering after use, they gather them. Some even bring them in trucks and that shows how people are adapting to our message,” Mr Aboluah said.

The project recently produced 1,000 bags, each made from 35 pieces of used 500 millilitre sachet water bags, for participants at the just ended West Africa Clean Energy and Environment (WACEE) Exhibition and Conference in Accra.

“That means about 35,000 plastic sachet water bags were collected from the system. Now, you can imagine what that means to the environment,” he said.

He added that his outfit was now aiming at producing one million of the purse-like shopping bags for retail in markets throughout the country.

“And if we succeed, then we would have collected over seven million plastic sachet water bags from the system and that is remarkable,” he noted. Each of those bags is produced from 70 pieces of the sachet.

The New product

In addition to rescuing plastic waste and turning them into lovely items, the Trashy Bags Project found a way of making good use of publicity fliers and billboard marts.

“If you go round the country, you realise that everybody is advertising. But when the advert is no longer in use, then the story ends there because the advertising agency as well as the company do not need the flier or mart and that creates another environmental problem,” said Mr Aboluah.

“So we thought of it and realised that we could make something nice from these stuffs,” he added.

He said the enterprise, as a result, has struck a deal with big corporate institutions and advertising agencies to supply them with used fliers to turn them into bags.

These bags, pretty and stylish in look, are proudly displayed at the group’s head office at Dzorwulo in Accra.

But unlike the plastic sachets, Mr Aboluah said Trashy Bags is not paying for the fliers and billboard marts because there is the tendency that people will go ripping off people’s banners just to make money.

The challenge

“For us, the focus is not about making a fortune but on making an impact on the environment,” Mr Aboluah said, disagreeing that his outfit was profiting from plastic trashes.

“Here, we do everything manually and that increases the cost yet we still keep our prices down,” he said, adding that “we are more of a social enterprise than a profit making institution.”

“As a result, we price our products low, knowing that the more people buy them, the more litter they take off the environment,” he said.

To the business community and general public, Mr Abluah said “it is okay to do business but when we do, please let’s remember the environment. After all, what kind of businesses will we be doing if we allow it to hurt the environment, the very place in which our products come from,” he asked.GB

Sachet water production - A thriving business with health implications

The sachet water business is growing in leaps and bounds but the issue of quality and regulation still remain unresolved. Maxwell Adombila Akalaare writes.

On a daily basis, 16-year-old Mary Azane criss-crosses vehicles, motorbikes and her colleague street hawkers and pedestrians on the Kwashieman stretch of the N1Highway in Accra, selling sachet water to a variety of road users.

She has been doing that for the past three years to cater for part of her expenses in school.

To Mary, a form two student of the St Luke Anglican Junior High School at Kwashieman, sachet water, popularly called pure water, has been a blessing.

“Because I sell it, I have been able to buy some books and dresses for myself and that reduces the burden on my parents,” she said.

Mary is one of the many young and grown up people across the country whom sachet water production has helped, by way of employment.

The sources of employment – the production, packaging, distribution, retailing and selling process – however hectic they might be, have helped cushion the burden of many while easing the rising unemployment burden on the country.

The water needs of many have also lessened.

Thanks to the 500 millilitre bagged sachet water, many people are now able to access and drink filtered and packaged water even in cars just by offering 10 Ghana pesewas in return for one.

The product has also grown many businesses and nurtured many more entrepreneurs, with some taking it as a stepping stone to venture into related areas such as commercial bottling and manufacturing of water dispensers for sale.

“Sachet water production is currently one of the biggest small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the country,” Mr Kofi Essel, Head of Inspectorate Department at the Food and Drugs Board (FDB), said in an interview.

These notwithstanding, issues of consumer safety and disposal of the sachet after drinking still remain unresolved.

CONSUMER SAFETY

Ever since sachet water was innovated to replace iced water, which was then packaged in plain oblong plastics for sale, many people have rushed into its production and distribution.

Unfortunately however, majority of such people have little or no knowledge and experience in the production of water on commercial quantities.

"Sachet water production is becoming more of pensioners' job," Mr Essel told the GRAPHIC BUSINESS.

"You see, because the job requires simple equipment such as water filter machines and source of water, people think they can easily go into it but that shouldn't be the case. Sachet water production goes beyond that," he said.

Although all sachet water producers are, by law, required to obtain and constantly renew operational certificates from the Ghana Standards Authority (GSA) and the FDB, majority of them have not lived up to that expectation, making it difficult for the two institutions to determine the quality or otherwise of their products.

“They rather hide and produce. Some people have this habit of turning their boy’s quarters into sachet water production factories and are producing only in the night.”

“Now, tell me, how do you expect FDB to trace these people,” Mr Essel asked, wrinkling his eye browns in apparent disappointment.

The Head of the Public Relations Department at the GSA, Mr Kofi Amposah-Bediako, said in an interview that such goods are only seen “when they are brought to the market. When that happens, we confiscate and destroy the water,” he added.

In 2011 for instance, over 100 sachet water production factories were closed down by a team of FDB and GSA officials for operating illegally.

And many more could have followed if the two institutions continued with the exercise.

To Mr Amposah-Bediako, however, his outfit and the FDB are doing their best under the current circumstances. But more still needed to be done, he admitted.

THE GHANAIAN PROBLEM

A sizeable number of the sachet water brands in the country, especially those in the hinterlands, are produced, distributed and consumed on the blind side of the GSA and the FDB – the institutions mandated to protect consumers against shoddy goods.

Such brands are normally without the GSA and FDB labels. The said labels, consisting of numbers and symbols, are meant to show approval of the product in question by the two.

Three of those ‘illegally produced’ sachet waters were seen by this reporter at Kantamanto, a slum in Accra and Nsawam. Their sachets had neither FDB nor Standards Authority labels.

Attempts to trace the sources failed as there were no contact numbers on the respective sachets. The sellers could not also help matters. They only pointed to kiosks and stores retailing a variety of sachet water in bags.

“In cases like these, what can you do,” Mr Amposah-Bediako asked in apparent loss of hope.

“You see, people are just not cooperative. Most of these products are produced by people who are known in their communities yet nobody is ready to volunteer information on their actions,” he said.

Beyond the hide and seek that has characterised the production and distribution of the sachet water country-wide, both the FDB and GSA officials said people also needed to be more health conscious with regards to ‘pure water’ consumption.

“Ghanaians are not health conscious. If we were, we would have stopped drinking water that is not approved by the authority and if we do that, producers will have no option than to stop,” Mr Amposah-Bediako said.

THE CONSEQUENCES

Early last year, the country awoke to news of a cholera outbreak in the national capital, Accra. That was unprecedented, given that Ghana is thought to have come of age to be attacked by diseases emanating from improper hygienic conditions.

But it happened. As at the middle of 2012, the outbreak had spread nation-wide, claiming over 60 lives and threatening over 4,000 more people, according to reports from the Ghana Health Service at the time.

Many health officers, including the Public Health Director of the Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA), blamed the outbreak partly on the production and sale of pure water.

“Nobody knows how wholesome their source of water is. We don’t also know the health status of the producers and the sellers and that is a problem,” the Director, Dr Simpson Boateng, said in a recent interview.

The department sometimes undertakes unannounced visits to sachet water production sites and according to Dr Boateng, “there are interesting stories from such visits.”

“Some of these sachet waters are produced under very unhygienic conditions” he stressed, declining to give details.

He also faulted sachet water vendors, including hawkers like Mary, for helping spread unwholesome water that results in cholera outbreaks.

“The vendors expose the water to several unhygienic conditions. When they visit the toilet or urinal, do they wash their hands before using their bare hands to give the water to customers,” he asked.




Although Mary, the sachet water hawker at Kwashieman, said she washes her hands with soap and water after visiting the toilet and urinal, she failed to show where she stored the soap and water while she sold the water.

When pressed harder, she pointed to her house, about 100 meters from the street, as the place she washes her hands at.

BEST QUALITY CHECK

The FDB and the Standards Authority are overwhelmed as far as the regulation of sachet water production is concerned and their officials, Mr Essel and Amposah-Bediako admitted to that.

But while they struggle to bring sanity into the business, the two are also calling for a conscious effort from the populace towards their individual health needs.

“If you don’t patronise these sub-standard waters, they won’t produce again. In fact, the best quality check is boycott by consumers,” Mr Amposah-Bediako said.

Until that best quality check is implemented by all, many sub-standard sachet water factories will spring up and flourish to the detriment of people’s health.

This investigation was sponsored by Programme For African Investigation Reporting ( PAIR)