22 Aug 2019

Mayor Mr Kagiso Thutlwe has emphasised the need to educate children on waste management for the country to achieve a state of cleanliness.

During a partnership meeting with the city council and Vestras City from Sweden Mr Thutlwe said the cleanliness, inculcated at an early age would have a direct connection to the child’s own health and hygiene.

He, therefore, explained that as a way of keeping the city clean, they had taken on board Itumeleng Primary School pupils in Block 3 through an initiative which started two years back.

He said the initiative focused on waste separation and was already yielding good results, as the community had adopted it.

Mr Thutlwe further said they had also encouraged other companies to adopt the idea which also included collect a can.

He stressed that there was a need to keep the city clean as it was a pathway to tourist destination areas in Botswana.

Mr Thutlwe said the relationship established with Vestras City, was based on lessons that could be learned regarding waste management.

He explained that GCC used to take all the domestic waste to one landfill, which was in Gaborone, but because of the lessons learnt from Vestras City, a landfill was built 30 kilometres away from the city in the Kweneng region.

For his part, the Mayor of Vestras City, Mr Andres Teljeback, applauded GCC for the initiative of educating children on cleanliness, waste and waste management.

Mr Teljeback said the children would learn and instill the culture into their families.

Mr Teljeback said their visit was to confirm if the GCC had progressed from what they learnt from Sweden and adopted it.

He said adopting the strategies Sweden had on waste and waste management could change Batswana’s behaviour towards waste management and sustainable issues. He pointed out that recycling waste was the ‘in thing’ around the world saying if practiced, there would be good behaviour towards waste and its management.ENDS