Maravi

Chisenga urges partnership for waste energy power plant
By Henry Sinyangwe
Tue 22 Oct. 2013, 14:00 CAT

LUSAKA mayor Daniel Chisenga has challenged the private sector to partner with the local authority in establishing a waste energy power plant.

He said this would be a better way of keeping the cities clean as the youth would be collecting garbage for sale to the power plants. Chisenga said it was not the responsibility of the councils alone to collect garbage, but a duty for all stakeholders.

Recently, Forum for Democracy and Development president, Edith Nawakwi, during a graduation ceremony of over 1,000 young people that were trained as garbage collectors through a Danish-funded initiative undertaken under the auspices of a newly-formed company called Neighbours Friend Waste Management Limited at Lusaka's Pamodzi Hotel, challenged unemployed youth to take up the opportunity of collecting garbage in the country.

Nawakwi, the patron of the organisation, said young people in Lusaka should not complain of being unemployed when they were living in an extremely dirty city.

And Chisenga said there was too much waste lying around the country.

"What we envision is to see that the waste that we have in the city can be collected and recycled. That will be a catalyst to create even light industrial areas for producing manure and electricity. But the council is not doing all that because we don't have the capacity to set up a power plant of which we need US$2 million, which is a huge cost. It will be good to have a situation where the private sector could partner with the council to invest in such kind of infrastructure because young people will be involved in collecting this waste and sell to the power plant," he said.

"We visited a waste energy plant in Stockholm, which is even struggling because they can't find garbage and they are importing from Finland. So from the garbage that we have, it can be good that stakeholders come on board to see how best we can utilise it to help the young people and women find employment."

He said the community-based enterprise was one of the methods benefiting the young people because they were run by individuals who could create garbage collection companies.

"We have what we call the franchise contractors, we have the community-based contractors and we have the waste management of Lusaka City Council (LCC)," Chisenga said.

"The community-based enterprise is one of the methods which is really benefiting the young people because these are run by individuals who can create a company, register it with the council and you are given a catchment area from where you are supposed to collect and each household pays a certain amount to you as a company, not to the council."

Chisenga said registered companies were managing catchment areas and employing young people and women to collect the waste from households.

Labels: DANIEL CHISENGA

posted by MrK @ 4:53 PM