The Sunday News
THE Environmental Management Agency (EMA) says it will soon start conducting raids at night in residential areas that have poor solid waste management records, with residents found dumping garbage in undesignated areas facing arrest.
EMA provincial manager for Bulawayo metropolitan province Mr Decent Ndlovu told journalists last week, during a tour of the city’s environmental hot spots, that the city continued to witness an increase in illegal dumpsites, with Entumbane high-density suburb ranking as the dirtiest residential area in the city. Mr Ndlovu said other suburbs that also had poor solid waste management records and were among the dirtiest areas in the city included Cowdray Park, Makokoba and Emakhandeni.
He said investigations by EMA had established that residents in the worst littered suburbs were illegally dumping waste during the night to evade arrest, a development that prompted the agency to consider conducting night raids in the affected areas.
He said residents in the “dirty” residential areas should be ashamed of their suburbs and must work towards improving the status of their areas.
“We are now going to ambush residents at night to contain the increase in illegal dumpsites. What we have observed is that most of the dumping is done during the night and the only way we can catch the perpetrators is to carry out raids during the night.
“If we catch anyone dumping waste at undesignated areas we will not hesitate applying the law. We might even detain whoever we catch as we would want to mete out the most deterrent punishment available. We can also fine them or take them to court if they fail to pay the fine,” he said.
“Despite our efforts to conduct roadshows educating residents on proper waste management methods, the problem of illegal dumps continues to exist. Entumbane ranks high in terms of illegal waste dumps and litter, while Cowdray Park, Makokoba and Emakhandeni are some of the problem areas which we will target with our raids.” He said areas such as Sizinda, Nkulumane, and Emganwini were said to be among some of the cleanest residential areas in the city having put in place sound waste management systems.
“Sizinda has been doing well, as well as Nkulumane and Emganwini in terms of disposing waste using the recommended methods. The residents there have come up with effective waste management systems that have made life easy for the local authority to collect garbage.
“Residents in other areas should visit Sizinda and learn from there. Actually those from the dirty suburbs should be ashamed of themselves. No one should feel proud of staying in a dirty suburb,” he said.
He added that EMA would also continue to educate residents in the dirty residential areas on proper waste management methods that would help keep their areas clean and safe from disease outbreaks.
Residents, who spoke to Sunday News, said they were being forced to dump waste at undesignated areas, owing to failure by the local authority to regularly collect refuse.
“City council is not collecting refuse. What do they want us to do? Do they expect us to leave waste accumulating in our yards? City council should do its work like they used to do back then. They should collect refuse on a regular basis and these dumps that you see will not exist anymore. The biggest challenge is that as residents we do not have an alternative. We will continue dumping until they start doing their work,” said a Makokoba resident who only identified herself as Mrs Ngwenya.
A Bulawayo City Council official, Mr Nkanyiso Ndlovu, who was representing the local authority’s public relations department during the media tour, said the local authority collected refuse once every week in all residential areas and efforts were being made to increase the frequency of refuse collection to twice per week. He, however, blamed the continued proliferation of illegal dumpsites on residents whom he accused of not co-operating with the local authority by failing to place litter bins outside their yards for collection.
“We have done our rounds in residential areas on days scheduled for refuse collection and what we have discovered is that few residents would have placed their bins outside for collection. Most people actually prefer dumping their garbage, a culture we have to fight together with other stakeholders such as EMA.
“We are trying our best under the circumstances and with more co-operation from residents we may achieve better results,” he said.
Bulawayo City Council is operating with a depleted fleet of refuse compactor vehicles with about 10 compactors working on a given day instead of the ideal 21.
