City councils in waste management mess

The country’s city councils continue to struggle to manage wastes in their respective cities due to inadequate resources as some residents to dump refuse in public places.

Spot-checks in the cities of Blantyre, Zomba, Lilongwe and Mzuzu found that some residents dump waste such as used diapers along the roads and markets, putting people’s lives at risk.

Blantyre, Zomba and Mzuzu city councils have acknowledged the problem and attributed it to shortage of refuse equipment such as vehicles and skip bins, as most of the councils are operating without almost half of the required equipment.

In an interview on Wednesday, Blantyre City Council (BCC) environmental health officer Paul Pansoka said the council is facing a number of challenges in the waste collection service due to shortage of equipment.

He said currently, BCC has only six compactors (waste collection vehicles), against about the required 12.

On the other hand, the council has 44 skip bins against about 100 required.

Said Pansoka: “On our side, we are unable to reach out to the residents with a reliable service which has been worsened by the challenges that I have mentioned.

“Even the skip bins that we are talking about are more expensive and that we are unable to place these bins in strategic places. So communities must come in to help Blantyre City Council in this service of waste collection.”

In a written response, Lilongwe City Council (LCC) spokesperson Tamara Chafunya said LCC has six refuse collection vehicles, of which only two are reliable.

“For the skip bins we have 11 which need to service 47 markets and other strategic places, but in an ideal situation we would want to have at least 100 skip bins,” she said.

Mzuzu City Council spokesperson MacDonald Gondwe, said despite that the council has inadequate refuse equipment, there is need to call for mindset change so that stakeholders join the council to make the city clean.

He said Mzuzu City has one working refuse vehicle and 12 skip bins, but needs 15 more skip bins.

Zomba City Council spokesperson Sylvia Thawani echoed Gondwe’s sentiments, saying there is a need for community mindset change to ensure that the cities are taken care of.

She said the council has one skip bin and one compactor and needs two additional skip bins as well as two more compactors.

The United Nations Environmental Programme (Unep) report released in June this year shows that 72 percent of Malawians dump their garbage either in rivers, open spaces or burn them which worsens environmental pollution.

The problem, according to the report, is aggravated by lack of adequate garbage collection, treatment and disposal facilities.

UN statistics further show that 988 tonnes of garbage is produced on a daily basis in Blantyre and Lilongwe where only 28 percent or 276.6 tonnes is properly disposed of.

The report says Blantyre produces 435 tonnes while Lilongwe produces 553 tonnes of wastes. This is equivalent to 435 000 and 553 000 garbage bags weighing 10 kilogrammes (kg) each.

This means 360 620 tonnes or 360 620 000 10-kg bags of garbage are produced annually.

Kamuzu University of Health Sciences epidemiology and public health professor Adamson Muula is on record as having said improper waste disposal harms life in the short and long-term.

According to Unep, Malawi will in the years to come face an uphill task to combat problems associated with waste management due to rapid population growth and slow economic development.