Minister faults BCC on waste management

Minister of Natural Resources, Energy and Mining Bright Msaka has expressed disappointment with the way Blantyre City Council (BCC) manages its waste disposal.
The minister said the current arrangement is hazardous to humans.

Msaka said he is concerned that people end on Mudi River, one of the most polluted water bodies in Blantyre, for its water for household use downstream.
Speaking after touring Blantyre Sewer System (Mudi trunk sewer) before launching a K50 million integrated waste management system for the city, Msaka said he hopes the new project will help in a small way to deal with some of the inefficiencies.
“The city has to do a lot more to ensure that what we have seen today is not what is going to be happening in a year, five years or 10 years from now,” he said.
Speaking in an interview, BCC mayor Noel Chalamanda acknowledged the challenges.
He said the council cannot manage to do everything on its own; hence, it was working on  public private partnerships (PPPs) arrangements to resolve some of the problems.
Said Chalamanda: “We know there are some people that have money that they want to invest in projects like management of sewer systems and they probably want to use the sewage to make such products as fertiliser or maybe to generate power.”
Ministry of Natural Resources, Energy and Mining is implementing the integrated waste management system project in the country’s four cities of Mzuzu, Lilongwe, Zomba and Blantyre as a way of carrying out its environment affairs mandate of ensuring a healthy and secure environment for human beings, plants, animals and the ecosystem.n