City needs waste management policy with focus on slums

Speakers at a round table on Thursday underlined the need for a sustainable pro-people waste management policy for the city slums.

Lawmakers, Dhaka City Corporation ward commissioners and officials, bureaucrats and representatives of non-governmental organisations associated with waste management who took part said the involvement of the entire community was important in managing hazardous waste.

They said it is not possible for the government and DCC to do the job properly with their limited manpower and infrastructure.

Two NGOs, Resource Integration Centre and Nagarik Adhikar Sangrakkhan Forum hosted the session at the CIRDAP auditorium.

The participants said Dhaka City Corporation Ordinance 2009, which neglects waste management in slums, is not at all citizen-friendly.

They suggested for setting up of ward-wise dump stations, increasing city corporation's manpower and support vehicles for waste management.

They said the city remains dirty as the government never bothered to provide land for setting up of waste stations for it. It causes sufferings for the city population, they said. 

Rahmat Ali, MP, chairman of parliamentary standing committee on local government, rural development and cooperatives ministry said that manpower, resources and time, would be essential for having a planned and clean Dhaka city.

He said it was obviously impossible for Dhaka City Corporation to manage wastes of an overpopulated Dhaka city.

Rahmat Ali called for paying special attention to the city's slums, where 40 per cent low income people live.

LGRD ministry secretary Abu Alam Md Shahid Khan said, 'we need to turn waste into wealth by waste separation for reuse.'

But it calls for public awareness, he said.

He also said that the DCC needs to increase holding tax and utilise the money for waste management.

DCC chief executive officer Abul Kalam Azad said that the city corporations earns Tk two crore, when it has to spend more than Tk 150 crore on waste management.

He said that the developers create serious problems for waste management by keeping construction materials on the roadside which also blocks the drains.

Rowshan Jahan Sathi, MP, DCC chief waste management officer Bipanan Kumar Saha, chief slum development officer Anawar Hossain Patwari, Manusher Jonno Foundation executive director Shahin Anam, NASF president Hafizur Rahman, Coalition for the Urban Poor's president  Sabbir Ahmed Chowdhury, Resource Integration Centre director Abul Haseeb Khan attended the session.

source:NewAge