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Improving solid waste management PAHO, M&CC aim to change environmental behaviour
The staff of the Georgetown Mayor and City Council (M&CC) is poised to assist communities with the effective reduction of open garbage disposal.
This follows the participation in the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) Cleanliness and Citizenship Community-Led Total Sanitation (C&C-CLTS) behavioral Programme.
Last week, PAHO teamed up with the Council to facilitate a three day training C&C-CLTS programme for M&CC workers. The event was hosted at the Regency Suites, Georgetown.
C&C-CLTS facilitators noted that the framework was developed as one approach to finding a sustainable solution to the serious solid waste management problem in Guyana.
Over the years, several attempts have been made at various levels to solve Guyana’s Solid Waste management but with minimal success.
Instead, piles of garbage and cramped dumpsters, and clogged drains continue to be a regular feature at almost any junction of the city; a situation which increases the possibility of mass flooding, in periods of heavy rainfall.
According to information released by the M&CC Public Relations Department, this new framework to finding a sustainable solution to the solid waste management problem, and sanitation problems in Guyana, will be conducted with strong focus on leadership from the citizenry at a community level.
The programme is aimed at motivating, mobilizing and organizing communities to reduce the practice of open garbage disposal, initiating clean up community exercises in Georgetown, in addition to igniting and sustaining a change in sanitation and environmental behaviour with communities taking the lead in the processes involved.
Under the C&C-CLTS residents in communities are expected to decide together “how they will create a more clean and hygienic environment that benefits everyone.”
The M&CC statement outlined that “social solidarity help and cooperation among the households in the community are a common and vital element in C&C-CLTS.”
The statement outlined that “another key factor is the emergence of Natural Leaders (NL), as a community proceeds to become open garbage disposal free, C&C-CLTS encourages the community to take responsibility and to take its own action, hence community-innovated systems of rewards, penalty, spread and scaling-up.”
Additionally, the sanitation initiative will be implemented and sustained through two approaches; residents’ monthly clean-up exercises and sanitation services provided by Civil Society Organisations (CSOs).
Consequently, representatives of the CSOs are expected to go through training under the C&C-CLTS initiative. Facilitators of the project are hopeful that C&C-CLTS will be sustained as the community component in Guyana’s Solid Waste Master Plan.
In this regard, they noted that the behavioural change approach can become institutionalized within the Ministry of Communities, and Municipalities, as the framework for engaging communities in a sustainable approach to solid waste management.
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