By Adia Jildo
The mayor of Juba city Michael Lado Allah-Jabu has conceded that waste collection and management in the city has become a burden due to the misconception regarding how to dump.
Mayor Allah-Jabu made the statement during the launch of the solid waste management project plan, yesterday.
He said much as it the responsibility of the city council to manage the waste, it’s also the responsibility of everyone to know how to dump and where.
“It’s becoming challenging to keep waste management under control moreover city council is making efforts.” he said adding that. “Waste management is one of the costliest financial activity. It’s not that the policy is not well implemented, the issue is the people’s mindset, their understanding itself. It’s the people who are supposed to support the city council to manage the garbage”.
“Waste management is a concern to all city dwellers towards the safety of every citizen,” he added.
He feared that there will be approximately 547 pounds of waste that would be collected by the department of environment and sanitation daily by 2025.
“The city is big and the accommodation of waste is more than the capacity of the Juba city council without any support from other stake holders,” he said.
He cited waste produce a lot of garbage beside the markets yet the cost used to collect garbage is only earned from the budget and that collected from the tax payers in the market.
“The garbage collection is costing us a lot of money to pay in a day which is not less than not less than 7 million pounds,” he said.
He said management of waste has become a difficult job for the city authorities to compliment in a short period possible citing the limitation on machineries and technologies to manage the waste to become useful.
He noted that garbage collections were funded through tax payer in the market which was hardly enough to support the whole system.
He underlined that there is ignorance by the public on the cost used for managing waste in the city for a continuous cleaning.
Meanwhile the chief representative of Japan International Cooperation (JICA) Fuyuki Sagara said the issue of solid waste management is a highly concerning issue in the city as garbage is not well managed.
“This master plan is impacted by various effort and dedicated by the Japanese experts and our counterpart from South Sudan,” he said.
The JICA boss in South Sudan said the master plan will target about 50 percent of waste management by 2025.
Fuyuki said daily effort will have to be put to make sure that waste is managed properly to protect the environment.