Poor waste disposal hurting Lira city status bid - leaders
Challenge. Garbage dumped at the southern gate of Lira Main market in April last year. PHOTO BY ISAAC OTWII
What you need to know:
- Dr Kayom explained that during the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) insurgency, a number of displaced people settled in Lira Town. These rural communities, he said, introduced their lifestyles in the town such as littering garbage.
As Lira Municipality braces for city status, area leaders have decried poor solid waste management in the area.
Lira Municipality will be elevated to city status in 2022 but leaders and experts are concerned that there are no strategies in place to deal with the waste problem.
“I have observed that garbage is a very big problem in Lira Town. The town is not at all that clean because if you move round, you realise that there are many places that are very filthy,” Dr Wilson Kayom, an urban planning specialist at the ministry of Lands, observed during a meeting for dissemination of a municipal solid waste management strategy in Lira Town last Thursday.
He said whereas government under the Uganda Support to Municipal Infrastructure Development (USMID) programme helped Lira Municipality develop a waste management plan in 2014, it is not being followed.
Dr Kayom explained that during the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) insurgency, a number of displaced people settled in Lira Town. These rural communities, he said, introduced their lifestyles in the town such as littering garbage.
“And for that matter, even if the council tries to collect this garbage, it is not easy for the trucks to easily traverse this municipality because of the issues of congestion,” Dr Kayom said.
Mr Samuel Ahabwe, the acting town clerk, acknowledged that little is being done to address the challenge of solid waste management.
“Our biggest challenge is not transportation or where to put the waste but attitude and mindset,” he said at the same meeting last week.
Mr Ahabwe warned that unless citizens changed their mindsets, they might not be able to achieve their dream of the city status.
“This is the challenge to every one of us. Sometimes we are in a bus where the waste bins are provided but still you feel comfortable throwing the waste through the windows,” he said.
The law
Requirement. In February, Lira Municipal Council passed a waste management law, which requires every individual to take full responsibility of collecting garbage within their locality and transport it to collection points.
