Beitbridge in drive to improve solid waste management

BEITBRIDGE Municipality is working on a number of initiatives to improve its capacity to deal with the management of solid waste in line with the town’s rapid growth in the last decade, an official has said.

Acting town clerk Mr Loud Ramakgapola said they were engaging corporates, residents and other players in their quest to improve on the management of the environment.

He made the remarks after receiving a donation of 17 waste bins from Stanbic Bank.

“We have to involve all the players if we are to come up with a modern solid waste management systems, I want to urge other corporates to emulate the gesture from Stanbic Bank,” said Mr Ramakgapola.

The local authority’s Health Services and Environment director Mr Pio Muchena said the donation brought the total of bins installed around key points in the border town to 400.

He said they were also running a lot of programmes including the annual Mayors’ anti-litter half marathon, awareness campaigns and regular clean up initiatives at ward level led by the councillors, among others. “We are collecting over 700 tonnes of litter per month and the number has been increasing each year as our town is growing. Our situation (littering) is also made worse by our geographical location where we have more than 10 000 transient population daily.

“This call for us to improve our collaboration with stakeholders to enhance our capacity to deal with littering. In addition, we are working on constructing a new landfill (dumpsite) at a cost of $800 000 as we move a gear up on our quest to modern urbanisation,” said Mr Muchena.

The deputy mayor Councillor Munyaradzi Chitsunge said it was impotent for the municipality to craft by-laws which deal ruthlessly with littering and litterbugs.

Stanbic branch manager (Beitbridge) Mr Martin Nyatsango said it was important for corporates to play a leading role in capacitating local authorities in service delivery issues.

“We are working with a number of organisations and local authorities countrywide on environmental issues.

“As Stanbic Bank we very conscious of our operations in terms of the social, economic and environmental impact.“