By Kemo Cham
Hygiene and sanitation issues have led to deadly outbreaks and continuously put people’s health at risk, a senior health official has said.
Madina Rahman, Deputy Minister of Health and Sanitation, said the situation had placed the country’s fragile health system under tremendous strain.
She was speaking at the official opening of a forum organized to chart the way forward in dealing with Sierra Leone’s growing problem of waste management.
A rapid rate of urbanization, especially in over congested Freetown, had left the government unable to provide a matching services provision.
One manifestation of the effect of this was the piles of garbage on the streets, roadsides and at intersections across Freetown where the situation has festered in recent years.
The government in 2012, through the Freetown City Council (FCC), contracted the privately run waste management company called Masada to clean the Freetown municipality.
Last week Masada and the FCC convened a Waste Management Symposium on the theme: ‘Harnessing Stakeholders Collaboration for Sustainable Waste Management for the Municipality by 2018”
Waste management, if handled properly, has huge potential to turn problems into solutions and to lead the way towards sustainable development through the recovery and reuse of valuable resources, said the deputy Health minister. She said to have sustainable waste management in an urban city as Freetown required collaboration.
The symposium, held at the Barmoi Hotel in Freetown, was funded by the Wash Consortium, the Dutch Government, the US Embassy in Freetown, and the Environmental Protection Agency, according to organizers.
The problem of waste management is not isolated to Sierra Leone, said Mohamed Alie Bah, Minister of State in the Office of the Vice President. He noted that the ever-increasing amounts of solid wastes, accompanied by rapid economic and population growth in developing countries was challenging municipalities’ ability to promote sustainable development.
Bah however said solutions to the problem might be found in the private sector, by developing integrated waste-management systems, and by improving recycling practices. He said with global production of municipal solid waste expected to double in the next fifteen years primarily in the developing nations, there was the need for the development of a “comprehensive and holistic blue print” addressing issues affecting waste management.
As part of its twenty-year contract with the Sierra Leone government, Masada was to convert waste and produce ethanol, which is used as fuel for burning purposes.
(C) Politico 26/01/16
