Banjul City Council and its Belgian partners of the Ostend City Link intend to tackle waste management and greening the city of Banjul through its new launch initiative dupped ‘Sahal Set.’
The Council has secured five thousand seven hundred waste bins (D5, 700), two waste trucks, two compact trucks, and safety clothes for waste collectors to tackle growing waste challenges the city is confronted with, sponsored by the European Union.
Waste management is a significant environmental challenge in many parts of urban settlements. In addition, the capital is prone to the challenges of dealing with illegal waste dumping, amongst other environmental issues.
The project Coordinator Janas Schereens said the intended outcome of the project and the initiative’ sahal set‘ includes transforming the cleansing service to managing waste. There would be no more collection of garbage and dumping it at a mile to the dumpsite.
“As you can see, the waste bins come with different colors that can be used to collect different types of waste. Doing this would allow to separate waste and do useful things with the different types of waste“.
The Banjul City Council CEO, Mustapha Batchilly, stressed that the Council had some serious challenges in getting the Council to be in a position to deal with the people of Banjul’s health and environmental well-being. He believes the launching of the ‘Sahel Set’ initiative comes at the right time.
“We have been able to ‘heavily’ reduce the incidences of garbage negativities within the city. If we have compatriots who are coming to work with us and are open-minded, been active and ready to list, and dialogue, give a good service, is the result of what we are seeing here today,” he said
Meanwhile, the Lord Mayor of Banjul, Rohey Malick Lowe, said waste management should be everyone’s priority. Presiding over the launching, she calls on Banjulians to take ownership of the initiative to make Banjul an environmentally friendly city.
“There is the growing need to ensure waste and effective waste management systems due to its importance towards the sustainable development of our cities and beyond. I must acknowledge that waste has contributed a lot to our environmental challenges. We need to invest in reusing and recycling waste to mitigate and adapt to the increasing ecological problems and fostering more sustainable cities“.
The Banjul, Ostend City Link is a 3 million worth project funded by the European Union under the 2018 EuropeAid called Authorities partnership for sustainable cities.
Under the component of the three-year project also includes the planting of 5000 coconut trees on the beach of the capital to prevent coastal erosion.