By JOHNSON KANAMUGIRE

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Despite tight hygiene rules and efforts to rid Kigali neighbourhood of daily growing waste volumes, poor disposal at the sole municipal dumpsite has been fingered for a major environmental and health disaster waiting to explode if unchecked.

It has emerged that not even increased municipal spending on daily management of the infamous landfill outskirts Nduba Sector has brought reprieve to waste company workers and neighbouring residents who are routinely exposed to the risk.

For a long time, Nduba landfill has remained an open-air dumping site with disposal involving only compacting waste and covering them with the soil, which produces a never-ending foul smell and swarm of flies inflicting misery into lives of those around.

Sludge

Liquid waste on the other hand is disposed of into open pits that quickly become faecal sludge ponds and left uncovered, potentially contaminating ground and surface water in the area and downstream.

“We are worried about the health and safety of our children during the incoming rain season. Usually that’s when it gets really filthier, and even working on our farms becomes impossible as it terribly stinks and flies roam in every place,” Landouard Mugabo, one of the area’s 130 affected families, told Rwanda Today.

“The valuation was done for most of us, but no word yet on the compensation payment timelines so we can plan to move out. A few families with the ability to rent have fled their homes.”

A 2021 follow up assessment by the auditor general found little improvement on the hazardous state of the Nduba landfill since his last audit in 2015, despite the government spending a total of Rwf5.6 billion on its management between January 2016 and March 2021.

The audit indicates that since January 2020, Water and Sanitation Corporation (WASAC) has been spending Rwf1.07 billion annually on a contract for daily management of the Nduba landfill.

The contract was renewed for another year to end in anuary 2022.

“Although the government is spending a lot of money, the management of the Nduba landfill still has persisting environmental issues. This is caused by lack of clear roles and responsibilities in its management, as well as inefficient management of solid and liquid waste at the landfill,” auditors noted.

Operators in the waste sector complained that despite Nduba being the sole landfill for waste collected from all corners of the fast urbanising Kigali and environs, it operated for only 11 hours between 6am and 5pm.

Long distance travels

This left waste collectors grappling with tonnes of waste from businesses like markets and commercial buildings around the city where collection and transportation is done at night.

he constraints, coupled with the long distance travelled by truck to reach the dumpsite force operators to keep loads of waste in trucks for several hours at source or at the landfill waiting disposal while volumes of waste take long to be transported after collection.

“We are forced to pile up waste at markets and other businesses which causes an unnecessary hygiene crisis. It creates a serious turnover problem and we are unable to deliver on our obligations given that our fleet are always stuck in traffic jams during day time to find the landfill closed as early as 5PM,” said Diogene Mitari, head of Agruni Ltd, one of the firms involved in the waste collection and transportation business.

“In my view and based on the fast growing waste generation, the municipal dumpsite needs to have access to infrastructure and amenities to allow operations to go on twenty-four hours a day, with ability to provide waste disposal data.”

Sanitation officials at City Council and WASAC contacted by Rwanda Today did not comment by press time.