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afrol News, 9 Janaury - In N'djamena, the absence of an effective municipal refuse collection service had resulted in piles of waste dotting the capital and harmful conditions for city dwellers and the environment. Volunteer neighbourhood sanitation committees are now slowly winning the battle against rubbish. The committees initially were getting help from UN Volunteers and the UN development agency (UNDP) to clean up N'djamena, capital of Chad and home to 800,000 people. Now, the communities are turning refuse into revenue by selling 420 waste containers provided by UNDP to households and organisations to raise funds for their work. - They have arranged for rubbish collection via 20 centres and carried out small-scale sanitation initiatives, installed public latrines and built donkey carts to carry rubbish in an outlying area, UNDP reports from N'djamena. These activities have now created more than 100 jobs. The project team includes one international and four national UN Volunteers, who helped establish the committees and a municipal environmental steering committee. Pabamé Mahamat Lao, a UN Volunteer, told UNDP the project encourages people to participate in efforts to clean up their neighbourhoods to reduce the health risks caused by unsanitary conditions. He urged community leaders to "persuade people to use the new containers as a convenient way of collecting refuse." The 35-year-old Chadian volunteer - a former history and geography teacher with a law degree from the University of N'djamena - has been the driving force behind the project since 1999. "Working in waste management is hard," Mr Lao confesses, but he is proud that his project has generated income and created cleaner, healthier conditions for the population. Haoua Gamané, assistant to the N'djamena Mayor, told UNDP that sales of the waste containers would raise additional resources for the committees' work. Promoting use of the containers will "help improve the quality of life and upgrade environmental sanitation in the city," she said. - The project reflects the partnership between the city and UNDP, said Adam Abba, president of the coordinating office of the sanitation committees. "The initiative is helping clean up N'djamena by removing rubbish in the streets and public places, and use of the containers is another step in improving public sanitation," he said. The UNDP Local Initiative Facility for Urban Environment (LIFE) has allocated US$ 70,000 for the project. The next phase in February will set up four rubbish transit stations. UN Volunteers provide funding for office and other project expenses. LIFE operates in 12 countries on five continents, providing small grants for projects that improve local environments and alleviate poverty by creating employment opportunities, UNDP informs.
Sources: Based on UN sources and afrol archives
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