Politicians eye votes, ignore waste management
Edward Mpoloka | Friday January 24, 2014 16:00
Neither do the parties have policy documents spelling out how they would look after the physical environment should they be given the mandate to govern the country.
Despite the fact that the Francistown West constituency – where a bye-election is imminent – is perhaps the dirtiest part of the city, it appears the candidates Habaudi Hubona of the Botswana Congress Party (BCP), Botswana Peoples’ Party’s (BPP) Shathiso Tambula and independents Kago Phofuetsile and Joseph Mabutho are not offering any alternatives to the government’s waste management policy.
In the past three months of their campaigns, they have said nothing about the ecological time bomb that is Francistown West with loads of construction rubble, tyres, bottles, cans, plastic bags, furniture, paper, scrap metal and packaging waste dumped by the roads, open spaces and river beds.
The situation is not helped by the fact that there is little awareness around the issue of waste management with residents unable to see how their livelihoods are connected to the physical environment they live in.
At worst, it seems that the voting public sees the dirty environment as an eyesore and not a political issue for which their leaders must account.
In fact, the only time people seem to complain is when litter has not been collected for too long and their bins and collection points are overflowing.
“The carelessly disposed waste blocks storm water drains causing floods and also cause health hazards and poor aesthetics,” says researcher James Okot-Okumu about solid waste management in African cities.
A United Nations working paper compiled by Martin Medina underscores the same point. “Food leftovers and kitchen waste attract birds, rats, flies and other animals to the dump. Animals feeding there can transmit diseases to humans living in the vicinity,” says the paper.
Okot-Okumu says: “One of the most visible urban services whose effectiveness and sustainability serve as an indicator for good local governance, sound municipal practices and successful urban reforms is waste management.”
As they pledge to influence reforms in the health system including advocating for a better procurement system for drugs, better training for nurses and accessibility to health facilities, politicians should assist in the fight for a healthier environment.
Research has shown that waste is actually raw material from which jobs may be created. It has been argued that ‘management of waste as waste is wasteful’.
“Several companies have plans to expand their operations beyond refuse collection tenders issued by municipalities to active waste management that entails extensive investments in separation centres and waste processing and packaging,” says the Botswana National Report for the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development of 2012.
The managing director of Engineering and Environmental Consultants, Unangoni Mangole, attributes the growing problem of waste management to lack of education and creativity on the part of environmental consultants.
“There is not enough education to make people understand the link between a litter-ridden environment and ill-health.
Besides, the private sector needs to come out with radical solutions to the problem of solid waste,” said Mangole, adding that townships are the most affected.
Apart from being uneducated some people are too poor to pay for transport to ferry their refuse to faraway collection points.
There is need to create more of them to facilitate accessibility. Rich people from elsewhere dump their waste in townships knowing there will be no reprisals, Mangole observed.
Mangole is of the view that government should decentralise waste management and give back litter picking to the private sector instead of assigning it to Ipelegeng as has been happening since last year.