Garbage remains challenge for Jinja 3 years after city status

Despite attaining city status in July 2020, Jinja authorities say they are still grappling with garbage collection which remains a menace three years later.

On any day, it is common for most Jinja City streets to be crowded with filth and garbage, whose collection is paid for by its generators at a monthly fee of between Shs5,000 and Shs30,000.

The fee depends on the amount of garbage accumulated by a homestead or company.

For places like markets, the garbage fee is deducted from the revenue that is remitted to the council.

Meantime, garbage collectors move door-to-door, picking rubbish from collection points and homes, after which it is taken to a seven-acre landfill in Masese Village, Jinja City Southern Division.

However, garbage collectors “sometimes take a week or longer- without collecting waste, hence leaving homes and streets stuck with heaps of garbage, which subsequently poses a health risk to residents.”

Jinja City businessman James Kakaire says piles of garbage in different parts have made roads like Lady Alice Muloki, Lubas and Kutch (all in the Central Business Area) impassable.

“These streets surround Jinja Central Market. So, when vendors dump garbage anyhow, they block the roads for pedestrians and motorists,’’ he told Monitor on Sunday.

A survey conducted by the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Development between 2021 and 2022 estimated Jinja City’s solid waste generation at 182.6 tons per day.

Now, Jinja North City Division resident Kalimu Batambuze believes the landfill in Masese is too small compared to the amount of garbage being generated in the city.

He suggests that “the city council must start recycling garbage through a public private partnership to produce biogas and manure that can be sold to farmers.”

Aldina Village chairperson Lawrence Vinn Ssemaganda says the landfill gets full within a week.

In April 2023, Jinja City Council and the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Development announced a partnership to create strategies of generating energy from the waste, which was to be conducted through the Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions (NAMAs).

But Ssemaganda, who is also the director of Aldina Village Garbage Link, a company responsible for collecting garbage in Jinja, says residents need to be sensitised on solid waste management as a way of keeping the city clean.

“Council should also advise the garbage generators on how to sort garbage instead of mixing it,’’ he added.

Ssemaganda also urged council officials to rehabilitate roads that connect to the landfill, saying most of them are impassable- which makes their trucks get mechanical problems.

Further, Ssemaganda says council officials should pay for the garbage that is being collected from Jinja Central market.

“This market is the biggest in Jinja City and generates a lot of garbage,” he observed.

Previously, Jinja City Mayor Alton Okocha Kasolo attributed garbage accumulation to the filling and bad state of the landfill, noting that it has made delivery of rubbish to the site difficult as trucks can’t access it, especially when it rains.

Kasolo said the community, which was contracted to collect the garbage from the city, often gets “incapacitated” in terms of inadequate trucks.

But he encouraged contractors to put in more effort in collecting garbage because people pay for it.

President Museveni last April directed urban councils to recycle waste as he gave urban centres a 6-month ultimatum to have garbage skips in every 200 metres- and have them emptied every three days or “more frequently”, depending on the volume of the garbage.

Starting 2024, stockpiles of garbage remain seen in several of Uganda’s new cities, contrary to the president’s directive.