Rukungiri roads a blend of tarmac and garbage

Nov 19, 2013

Imagine goats feeding off a healthy green shrub just by the roadside of a busy municipality. This is one of the sights ofRukungiri municipality

By Stephen Ssenkaaba and Caleb Bahikaho
trueIn the Make Uganda Clean campaign, Vision Group is profiling major urban centres in the country, highlighting their sanitation situation, with a view to recognise the cleanest towns. The cleanest towns will be announced on Friday, November 29 at the Crested Cranes Hotel in Jinja after the Urban Authorities


Association of Uganda’s Annual General MeetingImagine goats feeding off a healthy green shrub just by the roadside of a busy municipality. This is one of the sights of Rukungiri municipality.

The municipality, found in western Uganda, is one of the biggest in the country. It is located approximately 66km by road, northwest of Kabale, the largest town in the sub-region. It lies approximately 400km by road, southwest of Kampala. This municipality is quite dirty.

Karegyesa Road, probably the busiest in town, is a fine blend of a decent tarmac road and a growing heap of garbage. Rukungiri is unsightly and the public is fed up.A recent Vision Group survey based on the views of residents of different ages and walks of life indicates growing disgust over the level of cleanliness in this town.

All respondents reported existence of a cleaning schedule for the municipality, but claimed to be unsatisfied with the cleanliness of the municipality, particularly the market areas, streets/roads and waste bins. While all respondents had ever seen dustbins in the municipality, these bins were reportedly very insuffi cient and dirty, earning the town a measly 3.7/10 score.

Seventy-nine percent had ever seen someone litter rubbish in the municipality in the past three months. And when asked what they did about the cleanliness of their own municipality, 11% said: “Nothing”. Public toilets here remain a nightmare as 90% of respondents said that they were dirty.

On average, it costs sh158 to access a public toilet here, which, while some people might afford, a few others may not. This often leads to careless waste disposal for those that cannot afford public toilet. Twenty-one percent of the respondents said they had ever seen livestock and domestic birds loitering in the municipality. And with 58% indicating that the municipality has overgrown grass with very little efforts from the authorities to clear it, a call for action is necessary. The entire municipality has only two public toilets, four small garbage skips and no garbage collection centre.

This, for a town of 14,900 people, leaves a lot to be desired. Refuse bankers were constructed long ago and some have been destroyed by weather and upcoming roads construction projects. Many projects here have not progressed mainly because of poor funding to sanitation.true

The total municipal budget for the financial year 2013/14 is sh5,384,854,639 (sh770,238,939 of which comes from the Government) and the rest locally generated from bus/taxi park fees, market charges, slaughter fees and business licenses. And yet only sh82,808,000 goes to sanitation and garbage collection. This is wanting. In addition, the town has one planner, four health inspectors, one engineer, one  lands offi cer, one education officer and an environmental officer.

Top on the agenda:
Sanitation drives


The municipal mayor, Charles Makuru, said Rukungiri is facing numerous challenges, especially in garbage management. He blamed the people for not using the limited garbage facilities well. “Although there are some few garbage skips in some strategic areas, people still dispose of garbage outside the skips.

This makes collection difficult.” The situation is worsened by the absence of a garbage disposal site. Makuru mentioned that there had been a garbage fill some years back, but as the population grew, it became overwhelmed and unable to serve the big population here.

He said the municipality needs more funding to procure a garbage site. Rukungiri’s winning formula for now is the senstisation campaign of the masses about proper sanitation practices, which has been well-handled by the health team

Plans

 To continue with mobilisation and sensitisation of the public on garbage collection.
 Provide a better garbage collection truck to improve collection of refuse.
 Provide more training to staff in garbage management and disposal.

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