 Working in collaboration with two Kenyan engineering firms, UN-HABITAT has developed innovative tractor trailer systems and a little pick up designed to meet the solid waste collection needs of small towns. In a clear demonstration of public-private sector partnership which it has been championing, UN-HABITAT tapped Farm Engineering Industries Limited (FEIL) based in the western Kenya town of Kisumu and Ndume Engineering of Gilgil town, also in Kenya to develop inventions. The Ndume Little Pickup has a flat deck body with a very low loading height. The flat body carries six or eight bins of waste which can be lifted on or off the pick-up by hand. In six of the seven towns, these Little Pickups will be used to provide a primary collection service, collecting bins of waste from businesses and residential premises and transporting them for transfer into large containers or low loading height trailers which will then be transported to the disposal site. Owing to the innovations, an operators and maintenance technicians’ training will be conducted in Gilgil and Kisumu next week for a total of 16 participants drawn from some of the towns falling under the The Lake Victoria Region Water and Sanitation Initiative. They are Homa Bay and Kisii in Kenya, Bukoba and Muleba in Tanzania, and Kyotera and Nyendo Ssenyange (a satellite town of Masaka Municipality) in Uganda, as well as from the border town of Mutukula on the Uganda /Tanzania border. The training is designed to equip the participants with adequate knowledge and skills to ensure efficient operation and minimum downtime of the equipment, thereby improving the efficiency of the towns in solid waste management. The Lake Victoria Region Water and Sanitation Initiative is a collaborative effort between UN-HABITAT, the Governments of Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda, and the Secretariat of the East African Community. It supports small towns in the Lake Victoria region to attain the water and sanitation target of the Millennium Development Goals. Its objectives are to improve the water supply and sanitation coverage for the poor and to reduce the pollution of the lake from these towns. Under the Initiative UN-HABITAT is providing capacity building and grant support to seven towns in the Lake Victoria region to rehabilitate existing facilities and to improve local capacity for operations, maintenance and service delivery. |
