By Dean Chisambo
Lilongwe District Commissioner Roford Palani has commended the Lilongwe Shift youth group and Wind Ride Aeros (WRA) for coming up with the awareness campaign and data on waste management in Lilongwe city markets especially Chinsapo market.
Speaking during the data disseminating workskop on drone technology in Lilongwe on Thursday, Palani said they really appreciate the effort that has been done by the Shift and WRA to make sure that they are complementing the government effort because of present launch of screen up campaign and councils are encouraged to make sure that they are cleaning the waste in their markets.
He said waste management is a challenge due to the fact that they have alot of markets all over the city of Lilongwe and the population is very high.
He said: “alot of people are not aware on how best can they help in terms of removing the waste, they dump the waste but they don’t have time to manage it, so it is a problem in Lilongwe.
“We really appreciate what they are doing by helping us especially the Chinsapo market which they sensitise the people, giving them awareness campaign and for us is a plus and are happy with the work that they are doing.”
Palani added that they have environmental department which has a budget geared to make sure that they clean and manage the waste in Lilongwe.
In his remarks one of the Shift group member Uppeh Assedi said they went to Chinsapo market because it’s their model site to map the area and to know how the waste situation is in the market so that they can be able to collect the data which will influence them to come up with the decisions on how they can go forward towards the market.
He further said that their findings shows that the residents are very poor when it comes to waste disposal saying based on the findings they are able now to see on how best they can move forward towards their next step.
On his part Wind Ride Aeros (WRA) Co founder and chief executive officer Moses Fuleya said the Shifters are driven by passion to make change with regards to proper waste management and the drone technology is coming up to generate evidence old data that will help them in decision making on proper waste management.
Fuleya said they started with Chinsapo market because their target is to enhance proper waste management in all city markets through collecting data using drones technology.
The Shift group is the youth advocacy campaign working in partnership with RAW which generates data using drones and use it to lobby on proper waste management.
The advocacy campaign on waste management and disseminating workshop was funded by Save the Children.
