09 Mar 2020

The Southern District Council (SDC) has hailed the waste buy back initiative. 

Speaking at the end of a benchmarking exercise with North West District Council (NWDC), SDC chairperson, Mr Thamiso Chabalala, said the waste buy back initiative benefited members of the communities financially. 

Mr Chabalala said his council would take leaf from the NWDC initiative, which involved members of the community in cleaning up the environment. 

NWDC introduced the initiative in 2017 to tackle littering and illegal dumping of waste by involving the community in keeping the environment clean. 

The initiative was piloted at Matlapana ward and Matsaudi village before being rolled out to other wards in Maun. 

Mr Chabalala noted that SDC had a challenge to implement projects effectively noting that the benchmarking exercise came handy. The SDC team also visited a poverty eradication project in Etsha 6. 

Maun Administration Authority (MAA) senior assistant council secretary, Ms Mogomotsi Seemule, said the ideas shared would assist the NWDC to improve its initiatives. 

Ms Seemule also desired for the partnership between NWDC and SDC to continue. 

Giving a brief on the waste buy back initiative, she said it allowed members of the community to sort garbage and get paid by the council after weighing of the waste. 

She said the waste was then delivered by the council to recyclers at the landfill who have a market in South Africa.

 The project had so far dispersed about P28 000 in 2017/2018 financial year, about P84 000 in 2018/2019 and about P120 000 in 2019/2020 financial year. ends