Where does Lusaka waste go?

Lusaka's Chunga dumpsite hasn't helped address the garbage challenges in the city.

DOREEN NAWA, Lusaka
IN MOST urban areas in Zambia, only a small fraction of the waste generated daily is collected and safely disposed. The rest is anyone’s guess.
For Lusaka, the city generates about one million tonnes of waste annually, according to the city’s Waste Management Unit (WMU). But only half of this is taken to the designated dump site.
For years, waste management has emerged as one of the greatest challenges facing Lusaka City.
It is not a new problem though.
But the volume of waste being generated continues to increase at a faster rate than the ability of the city authorities to improve on the financial and technical resources needed to parallel this growth.
Currently, the Lusaka City Council (LCC) is struggling to manage the waste under tight budgets; highly-inadequate and malfunctioning equipment. This is evidenced from the inefficient collection practices with variable levels of service, poor and unhygienic operating practices in the waste management in the city.
The local authority seems too handicapped to redeem the situation anytime soon.
But council public relations manager George Sichimba says Lusaka city is facing challenges in managing waste because of the indiscriminate illegal dumping and littering, and a public which is seemingly not sensitive to the garbage around it or indeed has any awareness of what represents responsible waste management.
“As a local authority, we cannot deny the fact that we have challenges in managing our waste in the city,” Mr Sichimba admits.
“There are a lot of illegal players in waste management. We have laws in place that prohibit people from indiscriminate waste disposal but people are not sensitive. Enforcing this law has been a challenge. And since they are not registered, they do not dump the waste they collect at the designated place, Chunga dumpsite. They instead dump such waste anywhere and mostly in the night.”
Chunga dumpsite sits on a 10 acre land, north of Lusaka City.
“Only a quarter of the land at Chunga dumpsite is being utilised. The current status of the site looking full are just artificial, the problem is that we do not have equipment to compact the waste, as a result, the management of this waste has been challenging,” Mr Sichimba says.
The council public relations manager however says plans are under way in the 2018 budget to purchase equipment that will compact waste at the Chunga dump site.
“We need specialised equipment to handle the waste in Lusaka because it is mainly plastic,” Mr Sichimba said.
Kenya recently became the latest country to ban plastic bags.
Kenyans producing, selling or even using plastic bags will risk imprisonment of up to four years or fines of US$40,000. It is said to be the world’s toughest law aimed at reducing plastic pollution to come into effect. It took Kenya three attempts over a period of 10 years to finally pass the law.
There are more than 40 countries that have banned, partly banned or taxed single use of plastic bags, including China, France, Rwanda, and Italy.
The Guardian of the United Kingdom quoted Habib El-Habr, an expert on marine litter working with the United Nations environment programme in Kenya as saying plastic bags take between 500 to 1,000 years to break down, and also enter the human food chain through fish and other animals.
In fact, in slaughterhouses in Kenya’s capital, some cows destined for human consumption had 20 bags removed from their stomachs.
In Lusaka, and indeed in the rest of the country, plastic is everywhere.
Plastic is used in everything from the keyboard or pen, to contact lenses, plates and even banknotes in your wallet. It’s in your clothes, phone, car, mattress, and television screen.
Plastics have been used extensively in both food and water packaging in Zambia all because they are easy to carry.
Plastic bottles and sachets used to package iced water that is sold to people in transit points and in moving vehicles have become widespread countrywide.
However, the packaging revolution has not been correspondingly backed by appropriate plastic waste management policy, which has left many cities in the country littered with plastic wastes; thus, creating disgusting visual nuisances and other public health problems.
“The plastic bags we have in Lusaka are so flimsy that millions of them only get used once before being thrown away, you see them in the trees, in the hedges and on the ground,” observes Peter Chulu, a Lusaka resident identifying himself as an environmental activist. “They are everywhere and when they settle on the ground, they collect small pools of stagnant water, in which mosquitos breed now that its rain season, the situation gets worse.”
He says plastic can be flexible or rigid but its lightness also makes it very appealing.
But he believes that overall, plastic is a major environmental issue.
He also points an accusing finger at shopping malls.
“Have you ever considered shopping malls as sources of environmental pollution? This is actually a fact in many cases due to several activities usually associated with shopping malls or shopping centers,” Mr Chulu says. “There is need for shopping malls to find a way of managing the waste that their malls generate.”
But there are exceptions.
Foxdale Court in Lusaka’s Roma is one.
From its inception, its waste disposal has been organised in a way that separates all the paper, cardboard, plastic bags, plastic bottles, and food waste.
Foxdale founder and managing director Angelika Andersen says from the time the mall opened, its management decided to have their own waste management initiatives.
“The paper, cardboard, plastic bags and plastic bottles are collected or delivered to recycling companies around Lusaka,” Angelika says. “The food waste is loaded into a series composting machines, located in our waste management area. The food waste is mixed with sawdust and turned on a daily basis. The food waste turns into compost within a four to six week period. The compost is used in the gardens around Foxdale Court.”
If there is one thing that Foxdale has proved, it is that recycling is key to managing waste. Also awareness raising. Every year on June 5, Foxdale Court organises activities to commemorate the World Environment Day.
“For me, one of the major challenges is our attitude towards the environment. We don’t have a healthy attitude right now,” says Gwendoline Chilufya of Lusaka’s Rhodespark area. “If we can develop that healthy attitude towards the environment, the environment becomes a better place for everybody. You should not have to wait for somebody to tell you to do the right thing. You know yourself that it is not right to litter the environment.”
To ensure effective management of waste, the LCC works in partnership with private waste management companies which service conventional and peri-urban areas in the city. Currently, the council has 16 waste management districts (WMD), and of these, 14 are manned by the private sector while the other two are under the council; these are Kamwala and the central business district.
“We have franchise contracts with private companies. A franchise contract provides a private waste collector with the sole right and obligation to collect and transport waste from all premises in a franchised waste management district to the dump site,” Mr Sichimba says.
The franchise collector awarded with a franchise contract has the responsibility for setting and collecting waste fees for the services provided.
“The fee is however subject to a ceiling set by the council. The waste collector determines the type pf waste receptacles (bags, bins or containers), subject to approval by the council. The fees vary depending on the residential areas,” he says.
However, the maximum fees the waste management companies may charge are subject to negotiations on behalf of the community by LCC. PUBLISHED IN THE ZAMBIA DAILY MAIL ON OCTOBER 15, 2017. LINK: https://www.daily-mail.co.zm/where-does-lusaka-waste-go/

Tech trials births an extraordinary truck

ZAI truck designer at Fringilla Lodge in Chisamba. PICTURE: DOREEN NAWA

DOREEN NAWA, Lusaka
IT ALL started as an experiment. A challenge is given. ZaiLab’s industrial design team was given an unusual challenge: design a working truck worthy of a big-budget sci-fi film in just 300 days.
Success or failure, the team was determined at their workshop in Cape Town, South Africa to design a truck like never before.
The challenge is now a reality. The Zai truck is now on its wheels heading to Antarctica from Cape to Cairo through to the Mediterranean.
Zai truck is the first ever all-terrain, all-purpose, mobile laboratory, studio, mobile office (or home) party truck.
Designed by a South African based Software company Zailab, it took a year to covert an ordinary military Man KAT 6×6 truck chassis into a Zai truck.
This truck started its journey from Cape Town on September 18, 2017 passing through the Namib Desert in Namibia through to Botswana.
On Tuesday, September 26, 2017, the Zai truck entered Zambia through Livingstone’s Victoria Falls border.
“There is joy on the journey. I find it amazing that every time we stop, we have conversations, including with the police. I love how the Zai truck brings us together. From Cape Town, we have had people coming to us and we have had great conversations,” says crew member Dominique Vandenhoudt.
The Zai truck’s interior is just as forward-thinking as its exterior. Its central driver’s seat commands a touchscreen dashboard fed by a range of sensors and video cameras.
Mr Vandenhoudt says their journey is under one of the projects undertaken by Zailab called Voices of Humanity.
‘It’s an expedition that starts from Cape to Cairo, on our way, we stop at certain points in each country and town, we stop and get to our small studio set up. We have a set of 10 questions and we ask people to answer them, the questions are personal like, what is love? The beauty about this undertaking is that each time we ask these questions, we get different answers,” Mr Vandenhoudt says.
By December 2017, the Zai truck is scheduled to reach Alexandria in Egypt, then Europe through the Mediterranean to Greece and later America until Antarctica.
“It started from a dream by the Zailab chief executive officer and founder Nour Addine Ayyoub to reward conversations. He values people’s thought. We need to find out that on the continent. It is the first time we are undertaking this project,” Mr Vandenhoudt says.
A security guard at Chisamba’s Fringilla Lodge says, “I had the privilege of seeing the Zai Truck and standing as the cockpit opened up. Very cool Starwars looking vehicle. Children around this place love it. We took some pictures and I posted them on Facebook,” he recalls.
Designing and building a truck more fit for an orbit than earth might seem an odd choice for such an organisation.
Taking a truck like this to Antarctica for New Year’s might seem odder still.
But Zailab, determined to snap the status quo, regards traditional marketing with a significant amount of distrust.
So, both to showcase the skill of its designers and to start a few conversations, the company bought a truck from the military and started transmuting it into a vehicle any starfleet captain would be proud of.
The plan is to tour the world with it, and in so doing, highlight places that deserve the world’s attention.
Zai truck designer and crew member Roelf Mulder says the truck started out life as a MAN KAT, a practically indestructible 6×6 developed for those times when you need to deliver a 10-ton payload to, say, the Base Camp of Everest (or a science base in Antarctica).
It’s on this respectable base that Zailab’s industrial design team should be proud of themselves for conquering the challenge.
“The truck is an all-terrain. It has what looks like a rock-solid framework that holds up a frontage with the sort of modular aerodynamics and segmented aesthetic that one expects to find on a battle machine.
A hexagonal aperture at the rear, glowing red, carries the promise of an afterburner.
The Zai truck is a twelve seater. Two passenger seats are positioned to either side, and three are found immediately behind; one of these seats, higher than the others, gives its passenger a panoramic view courtesy of a turret that pivots out from the roof.
Expanding the deal is a collection of tech upgrades: solar panels, software-controlled driver features, a laser set-up and a sound system with a punch like on the rear right in its studio. That’s the Zai truck for you.
The challenge conquered successfully.PUBLISHED IN THE ZAMBIA DAILY MAIL ON OCTOBER 8, 2017. LINK: https://www.daily-mail.co.zm/tech-trials-births-an-extraordinary-truck/

Zambia’s alcohol intake out of control?

An unidentified youth in Kalingalinga drinking tujilijili.

DOREEN NAWA, Lusaka
FOR those that drink beer, Zambia has an abundance of taverns and bars, liquor stores and makeshift liquor stores.
There are numerous points of sale both legal and illegal, scattered everywhere in major cities and the remotest parts of the country.
Despite by-laws being set by local authorities to regulate the supply and sale of alcohol, opening and closure times of points of sale, nothing seems to work out.
Everyday, taverns, bars and makeshift liquor-selling points are full to capacity with people watching football games, listening to music, or just conversating with friends while drinking beer and other alcoholic substances.
Usually, the trend brings about the question: ‘Is Zambia in an alcoholic crisis?’.
Bishop John Mambo answers the question in the affirmative.
“Yes, Zambia is in a crisis. We cannot have beers and other unclassified alcoholic substances sold everywhere, in markets, at bus stations, supermarkets without proper regulations in a Christian nation,” Bishop Mambo says.
For Bishop Mambo, alcohol is not only a causal factor in many diseases, but also a precursor to injury and violence.
Its negative impacts have spread throughout to various communities as evidenced from the influencing levels and patterns of alcohol consumption country wide.
“We have statistics of road traffic accidents every year and all mainly point out to alcohol being the causal factor. A look at the cases of domestic violence, defilement, rape assaults most of them land at alcohol as the main influencer. What hurts me the most is that currently, the biggest number of alcohol consumers across the country are youths,” Bishop Mambo says.
Bishop Mambo says the local authority, the Church and every citizen should up their game and ensure that possible solutions to this challenge are found urgently.
A Lusaka teacher Alinani Jere says alcohol consumption in the country is out of control.
“I am a teacher and many times I visit these shopping malls especially Manda Hill and Levy over the weekends, what I find is disheartening.
Pupils have turned these places into dens for illicit activities characterised by unregulated intake of alcohol. Many of these pupils carry alcohol in their bags,” Mr Jere says.
But how much alcohol is safe to drink? It is a question scientists have been trying to get to the bottom of for centuries, and in Zambia there is no data exploring the safe quantity of alcohol.
While many people would agree that binge drinking in Zambia is deplorable and turns towns and cities into ugly and threatening places at night, the unavailability of statistics to show to what extent Zambians drink beer is unhelpful.
The recent Global status report on alcohol and health published by the World Health Organisation (WHO) does not place Zambia among the ten biggest alcohol drinking nations in Africa.
The report places Nigeria in the first position with Uganda being second, Kenya as the third, Rwanda is in the fourth position.
The rest are Namibia in the fifth position, Burundi is sixth followed by South Africa, with Gabon holding the eighth positions, Botswana is ninth and Tanzania is tenth.
Despite the absence of statistics, binging has always been a topic of big debate among Zambians. Those that trade in alcohol have their defence.
Jossy Kaulung’ombe of Lusaka’s Kalingalinga township says alcohol consumption is a choice.
“We do not force people to buy alcohol, they come on their own, and because we are in business, we sell it to them. We are not as responsible for alcholism as people think. As traders, we also take into consideration the caution regarding sale of beer to underaged. There is a big binge-drinking culture among the youth in the country,” Ms Kaulung’ombe says.
And a bar reveller Gift Chikumbi of Lusaka’s Chelston says in Zambia, binge drinking is glorified and the focus is not on drinking in moderation or for enjoyment.
“We should look at why the drinking habits are getting worse. The reason is simple, because of poverty levels, many people are depressed and they take alcohol as a relief. I am probably not a true representative of the Zambian drinking population as I am a light drinker, I drink maybe once a week on a Saturday,” Mr Chikumbi says.
Ministry of Health spokesperson Kennedy Malama says his ministry is concerned about the increase in mental cases relating to alcohol abuse.
“We have noticed with regret the increased number of ill health cases that come as a result of alcohol abuse. That is why we will next month (October) open up part of the Chainama Hills College Hospital to handle cases relating to alcohol abuse,” Dr Malama says.
Having laws and regulations is only one part of alcohol policies; enforcing those laws effectively is a prerequisite for a comprehensive alcohol policy.
The question of enforcement is thus crucial. Severally, the local authorities countrywide have fought running battles with beer traders and all to no avail.
It only takes a day or two before alcohol traders get back to their business despite the visible caution that excessive alcohol consumption is very harmful to one’s health.
So for now, keep those bottles down and you will stay around a lot longer. PUBLISHED IN THE ZAMBIA DAILY MAIL ON OCTOBER 1, 2017. LINK: https://www.daily-mail.co.zm/zambias-alcohol-intake-out-of-control/

Embracing technology for more health workers

Amref Health Africa CEO, Dr Githinji Gitahi with Daniel Kumwenda

DOREEN NAWA, Lusaka
AT the beginning of 2014, the Ministry of Health, together with Child Fund International and Amref Health Africa went tech savvy and introduced e-learning for aspiring health workers.
On February 13, 2014, the programme for nurses was launched by former health minister Joseph Kasonde to help accelerate their training in line with the 21st century technology.
To live this dream, on Thursday September 14, 2017, 1,039 students from 10 health training institutions gathered at Ndola’s Levy Mwanawasa Stadium to receive diplomas in nursing and certificates in midwifery at the largest ever graduation of health workers on the Copperbelt.
The event was the first of its kind on the Zambia soil as song and dance characterised the day as thousands of people turned up to witness the 41st combined graduation ceremony for registered nurses and midwives in Zambia.
The event was unique because among the graduates was the first-ever group of 67 e-Learning registered nurse students in the country, whose performance in the national examination was significantly higher than the national average.
One of the e-Learning graduates, Daniel Kumwenda says the experience was unique.
“I feel exceptionally impressed with this achievement because it has helped me live my dream of being a pediatrician. I did my whole course through e-Learning and when it was time for practicals, we used to go to various health centres to execute whatever we needed to do at that particular point.”
Mr Kumwenda, named best overall student in the e-Learning programme says he never took the programme for granted but instead, believed in it and worked hard in order to be added to the statistics of nurses countrywide.
The 23-year-old graduate says, “I am passionate about pediatrics. I want to work with children. I also want to teach others so that they too can achieve their dreams.”
For Mr Kumwenda, he learnt how to divide his time, at first, it was challenging but with time, he went through it.
Asked what his motivation towards his excellent performance was, Mr Kumwenda said he researched more and dedicated his time to his studies.
“I received study material on time, like videos and other tutorials in audio. I feel what is needed is just commitment and nothing else, I believe being in class and studying on your won is just the same,” Mr Kumwenda said.
Mr Kumwenda said for the two year duration of his e-Learning course, he was in touch with tutors only for four months.
One of Mr Kumwenda’s appeal is to see the Zambia Nurses Lifeskills Training Programme, which uses e-learning technology to train nurses and midwives, with funding from the Mastercard Foundation, extend to all provincial centres in the country.
Mr Kumwenda is aware that nursing is a hands-on programme and the fears of students missing out on practical should not arise because, this e-Learning course adequately takes care of that.
Present at the event were Group chief executive officer of Amref Health Africa, Dr Githinji Gitahi, CEO and President of ChildFund International, Anne Lynam Goddard and Program Manager for Youth Livelihoods at the Mastercard Foundation, Mr Koffi Assouan.
Amref Health Africa CEO Dr Githinji Gitahi commended the e-Learning graduates for their impressive performance.
Dr Gitahi said that the students had demonstrated the effectiveness of e-Learning in closing the gap of trained health workers in Africa.
Amref Health Africa has been training nurses using e-Learning for ten years now and students have been coming out with top results.
For Dr Gitahi, this success is a confirmation that e-Learning is a modern positive approach and he urged Africa to embrace the technology to accelerate achievement of universal health care.
“”Learning has to go along with time, now technology has come to bridge the gap and it helps accelerate the universal in Africa. Technology is the enabler to the future”, he said.
The technology is interactive and students have content with them everywhere they go, allowing them to work even as they learn.
Besides providing employment for youth and bridging the gap in the nursing workforce, the eLearning initiative is also aimed at reducing the maternal and child mortality rates in Zambia.
The infant mortality rate is just over 70 for every 1,000 live births while approximately 59,000 women die in child birth every year.
By training more health workers efficiently and effectively, more women and children can access life-saving health care.
The eLearning was implemented with the sole purpose of training more nurses to reduce the shortfall of nurses.
The shortage of the nursing personnel in Zambia is a thorny issue that has continued to keep government on its toes.
Currently, the eLearning programmes are being conducted only in nursing colleges managed by the ministry of health and is being conducted in phases starting with five nursing schools namely, Ndola, Kitwe, Mufulira, Livingstone and Chipata school of nursing as pilot sites.
Zambia is short of over 11, 000 nurses to meet the nurse-to-patient ratio.
Copperbelt permanent secretary Elias Kamanga says the e-Learning programme has proved effective.
“Let me point out that the nurses being trained using this programme are not different from those trained using traditional methods, those who have already established themselves and their high quality is still respected and because of the continued population growth and need for more nurses, the eLearning program will ensure that we increase the number,” Mr Kamanga said.
When the programme was launched, the Ministry of Health handed over the 80 computers to various nursing schools and 10 computers to the General Nursing Council (GNC) to use for the programme.
The target is to train 6, 000 nurses under the programme in the next five years with each registered school of nursing enrolling not less than 50 students initially and eventually increasing the number they gain more experience.
The General Nursing Council has so far trained 16 principal tutors in curriculum adaptation, 30 tutors in content development, 20 tutors in medical editing, among others.
Under the e-Learning programme, enrolled nurses and midwives receive a continuum of training, including diagnosis of diseases, care for newborn babies, management of labour and its complications, growth and development of a child and provision of adolescent-friendly services, among others.
This innovation in Africa is showing extraordinary development as evidenced from this training programme. PUBLISHED IN THE ZAMBIA DAILY MAIL ON SEPTEMBER 24, 2017. LINK: https://www.daily-mail.co.zm/embracing-technology-for-more-health-workers/