On Saturday 10th August 2024, the country woke up to the news of the collapse of Uganda’s largest and only landfill in the Kampala metropolitan area.
Apparently, the tragic incident resulted in the death of over 20 people and the destruction of lots of property.
Following this incident, President Museveni has since directed the Deputy Inspector of Government (IGG) Ms. Anne Muhairwe to expedite the investigations and produce the report very quickly.
Before this, the President also informed the country that he received enough information from the Kampala Capital City Authority Executive Director Dorothy Kisaka on the same issue.
According to the president, Kisaka told him the story of how they wanted to move to Dundu but the Dundu People did not want to be neighbours with the rubbish instead KCCA have been working positively by using the rubbish to, make manure, recycling plastics, as a good idea.
However, the President didn’t get an answer to the question of why human settlement was allowed near the heap and this could have informed him to sanction the investigations on the matter.
Speaking with this publication, Ms Kisaka revealed that the Kiteezi KCCA landfill has not had a bad track record despite servicing a highly growing population.
According to Kisaka, the Kiteezi landfill lies on 36 Acres of land in Wakiso district which was established in 1996. It serves four districts, Wakiso, Kampala and Mukono. She added that the KCCA Kiteezi landfill office reports show that Kiteezi receives 170 garbage trucks every single day representing 1200 tons of garbage from the three districts.
She explained that it is stretching that the dumpsite serves three administrative areas (Kampala, Mukono and Wakiso) though the burden of taking care of the landfill is born by only Kisaka added that Kiteezi rubbish has over the years steadily grown due to the increasing population in the urban areas leading to overutilization of the landfill site resulting into a hill, garbage mountain, as piles of rubbish are increasingly received there daily, from the Greater-Kampala Metropolitan area.
She also noted that the landfill is frequented by hundreds of litter pickers who derive a livelihood from the landfill through recycling activities.
The City boss revealed that recently in 2023, KCCA opted for the waste-to-energy plant as an alternative to putting the collected garbage into good use.
Waste-to-energy plants are the alternatives to dumping rubbish. She noted that cities globally are opting for cleaner alternatives to taking care of garbage by converting it into energy.
According to Kisaka, KCCA is currently in the advanced stages of the waste-to-energy plant establishment, once all government licencing is done.