Kabale Town introduces garbage collection fees

Authorities in Kabale Municipality have imposed a Shs500 fee on each resident for garbage disposal.
The fee is payable for any amount of garbage picked from a home or business unit by the municipal truck. 

The municipal mayor, Mr Sentaro Byamugisha, made the revelation on Monday afternoon while addressing journalists in Kabale Town.

He said the fee is contained in a resolution, which was passed by the municipal council recently.

Mr Byamugisha said the fee is aimed at increasing local revenue streams and improving hygiene in the city centre.

“We have been spending about Shs100m to collect garbage in Kabale Municipality per quarter and have been affected by lack of funds, which is why we have opted to start levying fees on garbage collection,” he explained.

He also revealed that plans are underway to start processing the collected garbage into manure at the Kirengyere garbage dumping site so that the municipal council can start selling processed organic manure to farmers, thus generating more local revenue.

The municipal council garbage collection and processing centre is located at Kirengyere Village in Kyanamira Sub-county, about 6kms off the Kabale-Ntungamo-Mbarara highway.

Municipal residents have, however, protested the new fees. 
Ms Rosette Mugabe and Mr Denis Warwe said the municipal council is imposing a new burden on them, on top of the other taxes.

“Collecting garbage should be one of the roles of the municipal council authorities because local residents pay different types of taxes to it. Levying garbage collecting fees will be another burden to the traders and local residents that are already choked up with economic hardships,” Mr Warwe  said.

Justification
The municipal environment officer, Mr Alfred Ahimbisibwe, said between July 2021 and March 2022, a total of 3,139 tonnes of solid waste were generated in the area.

“With a population of about 65,072 people, Kabale Municipality has about 12 garbage skips that have an average capacity of 4.5 cubic meters,” he said.

“Of the 3,139 tonnes of solid waste generated between July 2021 and March 2022, only 2,252 tonnes were collected because of limited funds and poor attitude of community members,” Mr Ahimbisibwe added.

He said high cost of waste management, poor attitude by the local people and lack of appropriate technologies for compost processing are some of the challenges they face.

“Working with the private sector to establish garbage collecting centres for recyclable plastics and optimised waste collection routes to reduce associated costs are some of the solutions we have put in place in waste management in Kabale town,” Mr Ahimbisibwe added.

Background...Garbage
 Kabale Municipality joins Masaka City, which in January started charging between Shs500 and Shs1,000 per household depending on the volume of garbage generated.

Five years ago, city authorities announced that they had embarked on identifying private firms to undertake solid waste management, which is one of the major problems affecting the recently created 10 cities across the country.

The decision to privatise solid waste management was reached following the failure by the city to effectively do the work due to low local revenue collections yet this component alone is costing them 46 percent of their total budget.