How managing waste in Kisumu has become a reprieve to idle youth of Obunga area
By Dickson Odhiambo
November 6, 2020
How managing waste in Kisumu has become a reprieve to idle youth of Obunga area
A VISIT to Obunga area which is an infamous informal settlement within Kisumu City ushers one to a territory that many people would not believe what it is today as compared to in more than ten years ago.
The area which was for a long time been known for serious insecurity issues as well as very poor sanitation coupled with no waste management at all seems now to be a darling of many would be visitors in Kisumu.
Now the area which is well lit with great street lights as well as good road networks in some parts are now boasting of some form of waste management associated with a number of youths coming from within the area.
Isaiah Odhiambo, a member of a Youth group known as Jamis Taka Investment says they formed the group in the year 2015 with an aim of ensuring that the environment within their area turned clean since it was always associated with a lot of dirtiness.
Odhiambo says they were also moved by the plight of a number of youth within Obunga who were ever idle and had nothing to do since no formal employment has been available for them.
He says one of the waste management champions from Migosi area known as a Mr. Silas, a fellow youth really motivated them to join the issue of collecting and disposing waste.
“We started doing a cleanup exercise with a few youth who agreed to kick out idleness from us by engaging in some meaningful actions like cleaning the environment and managing waste in Obunga area. This has really paid off and as youths, at least we have shunned idleness among some of us within this area as we earn something from this initiative,” Odhiambo says.
Odhiambo says they begun partnering with some organizations like ICD which has greatly helped it to work by providing them with a handcart for pushing the waste to where they are sorted by separating them.
He says they started the group with only four youth but since then the group has grown and have about 20 youth, adding that each youth can make shs 16,000 in a month from managing the waste after visiting about 150 homes where they collect the waste.
He says since the closure of schools across the country due to Covid-19, the group has engaged a number of students in the waste management, adding they started engaging such students even during the holidays.
He says one of the major challenges that they face is the transportation of the waste to the Kachok dumpsite which is several kilometers away from the area since they don’t have a site to separate the waste they have collected.
He says they work three days in a week, adding that on Friday is when they do most of the donkeys work within Kamakowa area of Obunga and parts of Nyawita just within the Railways ward.
“We can manage to collect 900 Kilogram of waste within a month,” Odhiambo adds.
William Adalla who hails from Kamakowa area within Obunga and a form three student says he begun collecting the waste when he was in class four especially during the weekends.
As a member of the Kamakowa Jam taka Community based Organization says he no longer depend on his parents for pocket money when he was going to school before the learning intuitions were indefinitely closed.
He says he earns about shs 250 a day, adding that when he save this up to end month he has some good money to sustain him thereby keeping some as pocket money when schools reopens.
“I can save about sh 1,200 per month and this has been very helpful in terms of pocket money which I don’t ask my parents because I have been making some from the waste management,” he says.
Adalla adds that managing waste has greatly help in reducing the issue of idleness among a number of youth who used to be doing nothing but now are fully engaged in it and making so few coins out of it.
He urges the youth to stop a lot of idling around hence get engaged in waste management and other meaningful activities, adding that this will make them also to not abuse drugs since they will be busy at all time.
For Phanice Awuor 25, a diploma holder in Business management from Masinde Muliro University and now the proprietor of Dawn of Obunga Community Based Organization says she started to work on the issue of managing waste within the area with an aim of having a clean environment around the place.
She says after graduating two year ago, she tried to look for white collar job but in vein and started to manage waste individually where later on some more youth joined her in her mission which she begun a year ago.
Awuor says the CBO now have 20 members who are benefiting from managing the waste and earning something, adding that apart from earning a living from this, the youth have also learnt about the importance of conserving the environment.
“Before we started this project of managing waste within Obunga are, the residents here used to throw waste anyhow without regarding the issue of conserving the environment but now we have sensitize them and they are now putting their waste at a point where we collect at a fee from them,” Awuor says.
She says the team covers about 200 households where they supply them with bags to put their waste which are collected every Friday and Saturday and the clients pay 50 shillings onwards depending on the weight of the waste collected so far.
“We even hire the tractor that ferry the waste to their destination which is Kachok Dumpsite at a cost of shs 1,000 every Friday. We also pay shs 400 or shs 300 to those youth who help us to collect and separate the waste,” she adds.
Mama Philgona Atieno who is one of the pioneer waste champion within Obunga area says they started it in 2010 when the area was very filthy when they were trying to sensitize the locals on the issue of waste management and proper sanitation.
She says they enrolled about 50 waste management champions whom they trained, adding that they divided the area into some units within the area to easily manage it namely Kasarani, Central and Central two, Sega Sega and Kamakowa units.
Atieno says through their good initiative, they managed to partner with Kisumu water and Sanitation Company which got them some donor funding and built about 15 new toilets at a cost of shs 20,000 each.
“This project of building toilets in Obunga has greatly helped in improving the sanitation because there is no longer open defecation within Obunga. This has further helped in reducing diseases like diarrhea and vomiting which used to be very common in the area,” she says.
Atieno is very happy about the work the waste management champions have been doing in Obunga area, adding that a number of youth and some older people have been employed through the initiative.
Recently, a project known as Complex Urban Systems for Sustainability and Health{CUSSH} had an engagement meeting with waste managers within the four informal settlements namely Obunga, Manyatta, Nyalenda and Bandani areas on sustainable urban waste management in Kisumu City.
The Complex Urban Systems for Sustainability and Health{CUSSH} which started in 2018 is a four year International Research project working in 13 partner organizations across four continents to help cities develop in ways which improve population health and environment sustainability.
The Cities include London in United Kingdom, Rennes in France, Kisumu and Nairobi in Kenya and Beijing and Ningbo in China where the project’s work will focus both on local priorities and city-scale actions aligned with plenary health.
Through the close partnerships with local organizations, CUSSH will learn how policy decisions to achieve health and sustainability goals can be improved and accelerated.
To do this, its process include steps that it hope will provide evidence essential to achieving population-level changes in areas that include energy provision, Transport infrastructure, green infrastructure, Water and Sanitation and Housing.
ENDS:
.jpg)
Comments
Post a Comment