Waste management project a success in Ampara
Staff at the UN Office for Project Services (UNOPS) who manage a
waste-management project in the southeastern Sri Lankan District of
Ampara consider it a sign of success when town residents complain that
their rubbish needs collecting.
“When we started [the project] there was very little awareness of the
negative aspects of improper disposal or of proper waste-management
systems,” Gary Morris-Iveson, UNOPS’s programme manager for
environmental restoration in Ampara told IRIN. “Now when they complain
that bins are full, it shows they want the waste removed.”
The project is part of the EU’s tsunami reconstruction assistance to
Sri Lanka. The EU had allocated US$12.5 million for post-tsunami
environment projects in the Ampara District, including environmental
restoration, drainage and cleaning the beaches of tsunami-related waste,
Morris-Iveson told IRIN.
“We removed debris from the entire 95 km beach stretch in the
district as part of the overall project.”
The three-year waste-management project, run with local government
authorities, was launched in Ampara District in November 2006.
The district was divided into three “clusters” or regions - in Ampara,
Kalmunai and Thirukovil - and the $5.5 million project covers all 12
administration divisions in the district.
One of the objectives of the project is to remove hazardous waste
such as that from hospitals to protect the population from infection and
contamination.
Morris-Iveson told IRIN that the project proposed a “holistic”
approach to the rubbish problem by tackling it from point of collection
to disposal.
“Usually projects will concentrate on one aspect, like collection,
recycling or composting,” he told IRIN, “but this project looks at the
waste cycle from start to finish and throughout the entire district.”
Arumaithurai Subakaran, project manager with EML Consultants which
conducts training programmes for local public officials and the public
for the project in Ampara, told IRIN that much of its success would rest
on community participation.
“A lot will depend on how people dispose of waste and how it is
collected,” he told IRIN, “the mindset needs to be changed that proper
waste disposal can actually benefit the community.”
Subakaran said local awareness had increased and now some residents
waited for collection trucks or brought waste to collection centres if
the bins were full. “Earlier it would be dumped just anywhere.”
The project has received favourable reaction from the community
because it has improved infrastructure and capacity levels while raising
awareness, Subakaran said. “If you just talk and there is no real help,
these programmes would end up flops; you need to match the preaching
with action,” he said.
The project has also been involved in cleaning up waste-filled
lagoons and 95 km of beach that had been cluttered with debris from the
2004 tsunami Forty tonnes of waste are accumulated in the Ampara
District a day, according to Morris-Iveson.
Before this project, only 20-25 percent of the rubbish was collected
and was either improperly dumped or burnt, he said.
“There was no proper disposal; even solid waste from hospitals that
carries health hazards was dumped and burnt together.”
Three landfill sites and 12 recycling and composting facilities are
to be established in the three cluster areas to process all the daily
waste; 1,500 collection bins have been distributed throughout the
district.
“We will also provide incinerator facilities to burn waste from
hospitals,” Morris-Iveson said.
The recycling facilities and the landfill will be complete in the
Ampara cluster by the end of 2008 while the other two cluster areas are
likely to be completed by June 2009.
The project also plans to promote recycling and composting as an
income generator.
“We have looked at partnerships between the public and the private
sector,” Morris-Iveson told IRIN. “The local administrative bodies in
each division will link up with a private company and explore selling
the compost.”
UNOPS also hopes to implement similar programmes in other regions.
“This is the first time that such a project has been launched in Sri
Lanka where the entire waste-disposal mechanism is being looked at,”
Morris-Iveson said.
“We are documenting the project completely so that we can implement
similar projects, for example in the neighbouring Batticaloa or
Trincomalee Districts.”
EML’s Subakaran believes that similar projects can succeed elsewhere,
but the trick is capacity-building while raising awareness: “Preaching
has to go hand in hand with action.” IRIN
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