STREET VENDING FUELING ARUA CITY’S GARBAGE VOLUMES

Plastic waste swiming in the trenches of Arua city along Lemerijoa Road

By Dramadri Federick

Arua City

Arua central division is grappling with the garbage management challenges following the return of street vendor.

Arua central division last year commenced campaigns towards cleaning up the streets in order to ensure orderliness, wipe off all the street vendors and had levied a fine of 50,000 shillings on anyone found vending on the streets.

However, these efforts continued to be sabotaged by many vendors who alleged no business in the main market and other designated markets living a huge burden of garbage management on the central city division.

Zaituni Candiru one of the street vendors who sell Carbage along pajulu road at social center reveals that they face challenges of delayed collection of large heaps of garbage from their produce by the city council.

During a recent council sitting Doreen Onyiru the councilor representing the youths to the city council raised concerns over reluctance by the enforcement officers to deal away with street vending which is the cause of littering of the city streets.

“When you pass on the road you even fail to smell, people pour a lot of dirty water inside the trenches which is really alarming and is making the town dirty and smelly, why not enforce on this and use the military to drag them to the markets?”

Richard Ferua Andama a long term political servant in Arua district who is also a resident in the city said this should be handled with immediate effect to avoid outbreak of diseases.

“Our Leaders must be more focused on such matters because these are some silent killers which can be sources of mysterious sicknesses in our communities.”

When contacted Malik Drakuma the Arua central division town clerk explained that he is on a leave and would not make comments over the matter.

However Victor Lomori the deputy speaker Arua central division attributed the garbage burden on the division council to non-compliance by vendors.

“Vendors don’t want to cooperate with council, we have designated points where we expected them to pour waste so that our garbage trucks could go and pick but you find garbage everywhere, where you are not supposed to go and collect and therefore it has made garbage management very difficult.”

The Physical Planning Act 2020 criminalizes littering or dropping rubbish outside the litter bins and that upon conviction, the offender will be subjected to a fine of Shs2m or imprisonment for a period not exceeding one year or both.

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