The Addis Abeba City Solid Waste Management System has moved back to its five-decade-old dump site at Repi. The move came after farmers in Berke Wereda, Oromia Special Zone, where the Sendafa Landfill is situated 20 km from outskirts of the city, refused to allow garbage to be dumped in the area.
The plan was to transform the Repi site into a Public Park, as it was claimed that it was no longer usable due to the absence of a fence, odour control, cover of soil on a daily basis, and a machine for weighing vehicles and their loads. This happened at a time that the country is developing the first African Waste to Energy facility to generate 50 megawatts at a cost of 120 million dollars at the same site.
Even though the problem of solid waste collection seems back to normal, there is still a huge gap in collecting garbage in some districts, like Bole and Akaki.
‘’Three weredas in our districts are still facing the problem due to the backlog at the Repi landfill,” said the head of garbage collection in the Bole district who wished to be unnamed.
The city’s Solid Waste Recycling and Disposal Project Office didn’t disclose yet when the new landfill at Sendafa will be operational again.
Fortune’s effort to reach the director of the project office couldn’t be successful.
In Addis Abeba, over 8,500 cubic metres of solid waste is generated in a daily basis. Meanwhile, the amount of waste generated per person is growing annually by 2.1 cubic metres in the city.
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