Solution in sight for Dar waste disposal problem

What you need to know:

  • The project will upgrade and upscale the waste collection logistics aiming at reaching at least 90 per cent coverage within three to five years

Dar es Salaam. Waste management issues here will soon be a thing of the past as the Dar es Salaam City Council prepares to establish a professional metropolitan waste management structure in the city with transfer sites, logistics and landfill according to both national and international standards.

The project will upgrade and upscale the waste collection logistics aiming at reaching at least 90 per cent coverage within three to five years.

The city’s head of Waste Management Department, Mr Shedrack Maximillian, told The Citizen in an interview that the project will construct at least two waste transfer stations at strategically located sites across the city in order to reduce overall collection and transportation costs, and to add value to the waste management system by offering nocturnal opening hours, parking and maintenance facilities and space for recycling activities.

“It will upgrade and upscale the Pugu Kinyamwezi dump site, turning it into a proper landfill and creating a composting facility and an on-site infrastructure for waste sorting and recycling,” said Mr Maximillian.

“The project will also develop an awareness building strategy and the execution of pilots on awareness building.”

It also eyes preparation of the first metropolitan Integrated Solid Waste Management (ISWM) plan providing an integrated framework for the roles and responsibilities for all stakeholders and providing policies and actions to promote prevention and recycling, he added.

In an effort to improve its management of waste, the city’s authority together with its five municipalities initiated talks, in 2016, with the government of The Netherlands to secure funding for the project that is yet to materialise, waiting for the go-ahead from the central government.

Between 2016 and 2017, a delegation from The Netherlands arrived in the country and held official meetings and promised to fund the proposed project.

Mr Jeroen Verheul, who is the Dutch Ambassador to Tanzania told The Citizen that his government is willing to put in a maximum amount of € 840,000 (Sh22.3 billion) in order to conduct the necessary feasibility studies for the project.

The project still on

Mr Verheul told The Citizen that the waste management project is still on the agenda of the Tanzanian government, the Dar es Salaam City Council and The Netherlands government.

He said a draft grant agreement has been submitted for approval by the Tanzanian government and after its approval, the first phase of the project (conducting the feasibility studies) can start.

“As soon as the grant agreement has been signed, the project can get off the ground,” Mr Verheul said.

A senior officer from the Dar es Salaam City Council who preferred anonymity said that “unnecessary red tape within the central government have delayed the realisation of the project” which is considered to “offer long-lasting solutions to the problems of waste management that the city is struggling with.”

Neither the minister in the President’s Office (Regional Administration and Local Governments), Mr Selemani Jaffo nor the ministry’s permanent secretary Joseph Nyamuhanga was available for comment on the progress of the project.

Asked on the progress towards signing the agreement, the principal information officer of the Finance and Planning ministry, Mr Ben Mwaipaja, said he was not even aware of its existence.

However, he said that if it is there it is clear that it will be signed when all procedures, terms and conditions are completed.

“Such issues must be made clear in accordance with the country’s laws,” he said.