The Independent Uganda: You get the Truth we Pay the Price
KAMPALA, UGANDA | THE INDEPENDENT | Researchers have urged the government to invest in ensuring that communities sort municipal waste before transferring it to dumpsites to avert future calamities associated with poor waste disposal.
Dr. Moses Mwesigwa a Senior Scientist at the National Livestock Resources Research Institute (NaLiRRI) who heads the Zero Waste Dairy Platform, a project through which several products are made from cow dung says the government needs to create awareness such that it becomes a routine for households to have separate disposal containers for organic waste, plastics, metal and glass.
On Saturday, the Kitezi landfill collapsed leading to the death of more than 30 people.
Mwesigwa says there is a role that the community has to play. If the garbage had been well disposed of, it could have been put to better use other than heaping it to become an environmental and health disaster. From just cow dung, he says the Zero Waste Dairy platform makes fourteen products including liquid soap, gas for cooking, preservatives and soil for mash room farming.
Dr. Collins Ssentongo an Environmentalist says the idea of sorting rubbish, incinerating it or recycling it to earn was introduced to city authorities more than ten years ago after he did a feasibility study on the landfill.
According to him, instead of heaping rubbish, he had proposed that an incinerator be installed to deal away with the rubbish but none of his proposals were adopted.
Meanwhile, the World Bank has recommended the decommissioning of the dump site. However, technocrats at KCCA say the site will continue being used even after the tragedy until they find other sustainable disposal solutions.
Eng. David Luyimbazi, the KCCA Deputy Executive Director told journalists that decommissioning of the site will happen after sanitizing and finding a place that will house large volumes of municipal waste generated daily.
The Kiteezi landfill serves different areas of the Kampala Metropolitan including Mukono, Kiira Municipality and Makindye Ssabagabo.
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