4. PRINCIPALES PROGRAMAS PARA EL DESARROLLO DEL PENSAMIENTO
5.1 DESCRIPCIÓN Y ANTECEDENTES DE LA INSTITUCIÓN
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CHAPTER 4
RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS
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Factors that hinder efficiency:
- Operational constraints
- Management structure/Constraints - Vehicle/Equipment capacity
- Financial & Human Resources problems - Technical Constraints
- Institutional Constraints - Economic Constraints - Social Constraints
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Figure 18: A Causal Loop Diagram showing the solid waste management system currently in place in Awka
Public Health Ecosystem based Life
Support Systems & Services
Organic Reuse via Composting
Population
Economy
Waste - Low Income generators ( 60% pop.)
Recycling - Formal and Informal sector
Ground, Air &
Water pollution due to waste emissions
& leachates Waste - Middle to High
Income generators In near future,
distance to a landfill
Poor Regulation, Enforcement & Corruption
Illegal/Indiscriminate Dumps
No Collection Service
(Informal) Waste Recovery & Trading
Small Private Collectors in harsh economic
environment
ASWAMA Collection Capacity
Disposal at Agu-Awka Dumpsite (unengineered) Medium to Large
Private Collection Ability to pay for
SWM service Waste
Growth Population
Growth Economic
Growth
Disposal Cost Limited Ability to pay for SWM service
Political, Legal & In fractural Isolation
Economic value
& Profitability
Pre-treatment costs &
contamination
No waste separation at source Unregulated Open
Competition in localities
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CBO Collection
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cial growths prevalent in the city at the time (loops 3 & 4).
In Awka, the waste generated generally falls into two broad categories, that from low income and informal settlement areas (loop 5), and that from middle to high income areas and whose residents comprise the remainder (loops 6). A third general category of generators not explicitly shown in the diagram but one that behaves similarly to the two already mentioned is Commerce/Business and general non-domestic waste generators, with smaller enterprises, kiosks etc synonymous with lower income owners and larger establishments associated with more affluent ownership.
Low income residents by nature only have a limited ability to pay for Solid Waste Management (SWM) Services, while middle to higher income residents on the other hand are better able to pay for these services (loops 8 & 12). In Anambra State, the general total waste collection service by ASWAMA has been consistently declining due to various factors including declining resourcing and facilitation from central government leading to internal operational constraints; inefficiencies in management structure; under-billing for collection service; inefficiencies in human resourcing as well as in revenue collection and other issues (loop 39). If more of the residents of Awka are willing, ready and pay their waste service charges (loop 9), ASWAMA is empowered to collect the waste generated in the area; else, ASWAMA and other waste managers are constrained to give an efficient and effective service to the people (loop 13). General direct service charge collections by ASWAMA have always been criticized and protested against by traders and allied workers. Also poor performance by ASWAMA, and politicking with the agency, coupled with the factors mentioned above have severely crippled the ASWAMA‘s ability to effectively meet the city‘s collection and disposal needs while meeting own operational costs over time. Loops 39 and 13 may be argued to be the most dominant causes for the ASWAMA‘s declining performance. Several previous studies have comprehensively investigated and noted the various causes of ASWAMA‘s declining capacity to range from corruption to poor management. The general resulting consensus however, reaching its culmination in the recommendations of the UN-Habitatand the US EPA, is the involvement of private sector in SWM services in the state. This has led to the rapid emergence of various private waste collectors in the city (loop 10 and more recently loop 15). The limited ability of residents of the state especially in the lower income areas to pay for SWM services however has to date been largely unattractive to the medium and to the large, more established, private collectors, and over the years these areas have remained under serviced due to low ASWAMA
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collection ability/capacity and low medium-to-large private collector interest (loop 14). This lack of service delivery in low income areas led to the emergence of Community Based Organizations (CBOs) in the form of Market Groups and general Self Help Organisations involving community members in the cleanup of their communities (loop 17). While many were initially formed for the major purpose of keeping neighborhoods clean, income generation was needed to sustain these activities. As a result a number of these are increasingly simultaneously involved in the active collection, sorting, recovery, and sale of recyclables to waste dealers and to larger scale recyclers in what is currently a largely informal industry (loop 19, Figure 18). On cleaning up of neighborhoods, residual waste collected by the groups are ideally either taken to designated ASWAMA communal waste collection points or left at the side of the roads for further transport to final disposal sites, complaints abound however of irregular ongoing waste collection by ASWAMA.
4.1.3.1 Observations in the study
Specific factors identified as being responsible for the failure of the various waste management boards formed in Anambra State in particular, and Nigeria in general, to perform their expected basic function include:
1. Absence of adequate technology for proper waste management
2. Inadequate policy making and poor implementation of existing Government policies 3. Absence of enabling legislation
4. Corruption
5. Poor public enlightenment programmes on the needs for proper waste management.
Public enlightenment programmes lacked the coverage, intensity and continuity required to correct the apathetic attitude which the public has toward the environ-ment.
6. Abandonment/Lack of continuity in policy implementation by new administrations.
State elections which usually call for change of administration in the state every four/eight years lead to a tendency for the previous policies to be either turned up-side down, totally abandoned or attempts made to thwart efforts to arrive at sustainable, long term solutions.
7. Poor funding, poor data management inadequate taxation, and lack of human resources.
At the various dumpsites, it was observed among others things that:
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8. The various servers (disposal trucks) were assigned specific areas (Zones) to ply in a day, but the routing was left at the discretion of the drivers and their co-workers (the labourers). This practice is uneconomical as these drivers travel about the city seeking for waste at dumpsites to collect - both time and some order resources are wasted in the process. ASWAMA management should device a means of determining the states of the waste at various dumpsites in the state in any day and use such knowledge in scheduling work (routing) for its waste disposal truck drivers.
9. In some days, waste at different roadside dumpsites were partially evacuated (i.e. only a small fraction of the large heap of waste that accumulated at such stations were collected and disposed) by the waste disposal trucks.
10. Inter-service time of many of the waste dumpsites varied from zero to one or more times per day or less than seven times in a week. The latter case usually led to chaotic (over accumulation and illegal dumping) situations with their attend ant problems. The waste generation lead time at every waste dump station should be scientifically deter-mined as to enable the waste manager fix the evacuation lead time for such a location.
11. One or more of the disposal trucks never visited any of the bin stations in a number of days; instead they routed the town collecting waste directly from the generation sources (homes, offices etc) for some token fees. This was one of the reasons why high volumes of waste accumulated in the said dumpsites.
12. There is no modern landfill constructed in the state, only open dumpsites exist and no ground-water protection, leachate recovery, or waste treatment systems.
13. Reduction and recycling of waste for profitability are not yet part of the state's management policy.
14. There is no urban/municipal composting program in any of the urban centers of the state, and anaerobic digestion to produce methane is not applied either.
15. While waste recovery and reuse of materials is generally for personal use, there are also many professional waste pickers. These waste pickers (including little children and women) are seriously threatened by disease organisms, sharp objects and other hazards in the waste, especially since they generally lack protective equipment.
16. There is no clear cut state policy on sanitation and environmental education in the state is very poor as observed during the field investigation. The only envi ronmental education programme known to the state is the clean-up exercise fixed for every last Saturday of every month. Many of the residents of Awka (mostly the youths) never
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participated in the programme, instead they used the period (6.00 a.m to 10.00 a.m) to play football, sleep, attend to personal needs, etc.
17. Furthermore, some of the waste management staff were poorly trained and no plan in the future to give them further training or to improve already acquired skill.