Community service law can keep our city clean
Apr 08, 2005
IF you have been observant, you must have seen a number of garbage bins around the city. But if you have ever tried to put them to use, you must have realised most of them are usually empty. You will obviously think KCC is ‘perfect’.
Timothy Mutabazi
IF you have been observant, you must have seen a number of garbage bins around the city. But if you have ever tried to put them to use, you must have realised most of them are usually empty. You will obviously think KCC is ‘perfect’.
These bins are placed all around the city thus expected to be full all the time if it were not for an ignorant population that we are. Kampala being the city whose dwellers go shopping and use polythene bags, you would expect everyone to know the degree of environmental impact these bags have if disposed of carelessly.
Walk around the taxi parks around 10:00pm.These are places that have these garbage bins on all corners. One only wonders whether the polythene bags here are here for sale or whether the buyers just find them useless as soon as they step out of the shops and decide to throw them away.
This reminds me of the gentleman I met at a supermarket in town fumbling with kaveera he had discovered he did not need after buying a bottle of mineral water. But why should one allow having a half-litre bottle of water packed when you know you are going to consume the water there and then?
Some people have the habit of eating while driving or travelling in a taxi and when they are done, they throw the kaveera out through the window.
Others use the green areas in the city — the Constitutional Square, Centenary Park, Mayor’s Gardens, to relax or have their meals. Why, after eating, can’t one clean up?
I have on several ocassions, seen law enforcement officers rounding up these fellows for being idle and disorderly. It would be proper to have these fellows clean these places before they are ferried to Luzira. That way, we would save the dime that is spent on cleaning the Nakivubo Channel where all this filth ends up.
It does not take a brain surgeon to know that littering causes a number of problems such as silting, drainage blockages, destruction of soil and flooding, which results in diseases like cholera and dysentery.
These buveera also become breeding places for mosquitoes and the mineral water bottles find their way back to eating joints where they are used to serve juice and other locally made drinks. All this is hazardous. These problems can be avoided by proper disposal methods.
The other day the minister of local government castigated law enforcement officers for harassing people while collecting graduated tax.
We can have a community service law whereby idlers and tax defaulters are required to do community work instead of filling our already overpopulated prisons. This way, we would save our environment.
Idlers would be engaged in cleaning the city and KCC would use channel the resources to other areas.
The writer is a student of Mass Communication, Makerere University
IF you have been observant, you must have seen a number of garbage bins around the city. But if you have ever tried to put them to use, you must have realised most of them are usually empty. You will obviously think KCC is ‘perfect’.
These bins are placed all around the city thus expected to be full all the time if it were not for an ignorant population that we are. Kampala being the city whose dwellers go shopping and use polythene bags, you would expect everyone to know the degree of environmental impact these bags have if disposed of carelessly.
Walk around the taxi parks around 10:00pm.These are places that have these garbage bins on all corners. One only wonders whether the polythene bags here are here for sale or whether the buyers just find them useless as soon as they step out of the shops and decide to throw them away.
This reminds me of the gentleman I met at a supermarket in town fumbling with kaveera he had discovered he did not need after buying a bottle of mineral water. But why should one allow having a half-litre bottle of water packed when you know you are going to consume the water there and then?
Some people have the habit of eating while driving or travelling in a taxi and when they are done, they throw the kaveera out through the window.
Others use the green areas in the city — the Constitutional Square, Centenary Park, Mayor’s Gardens, to relax or have their meals. Why, after eating, can’t one clean up?
I have on several ocassions, seen law enforcement officers rounding up these fellows for being idle and disorderly. It would be proper to have these fellows clean these places before they are ferried to Luzira. That way, we would save the dime that is spent on cleaning the Nakivubo Channel where all this filth ends up.
It does not take a brain surgeon to know that littering causes a number of problems such as silting, drainage blockages, destruction of soil and flooding, which results in diseases like cholera and dysentery.
These buveera also become breeding places for mosquitoes and the mineral water bottles find their way back to eating joints where they are used to serve juice and other locally made drinks. All this is hazardous. These problems can be avoided by proper disposal methods.
The other day the minister of local government castigated law enforcement officers for harassing people while collecting graduated tax.
We can have a community service law whereby idlers and tax defaulters are required to do community work instead of filling our already overpopulated prisons. This way, we would save our environment.
Idlers would be engaged in cleaning the city and KCC would use channel the resources to other areas.
The writer is a student of Mass Communication, Makerere University