Residents from Luveve have come together to form a cleaning task force in a bid to clean their environment and change the community’s perception when it comes to waste management.
Mafakela Health and Environment Taskforce was founded in February 2022 by community members who were concerned about their environment.
Speaking during an online diaspora conference organised by Makhandeni-Luveve Member of Parliament Descent Collins Bajila, the coordinator, Nomsa Mguni, said the task force seeks to address health and hygiene issues in the area.
Mguni said when they started the task force, some residents came to volunteer but as time progressed the numbers started decreasing and they had to engage the Bulawayo City Council (BCC) and Environmental Management Agency (EMA) to constitute them into community waste monitors.
“So even though the general community is not participating on particular dates, our core team is always there to make sure that something happens during clean-up campaigns,” said Mguni.
She said their administration is financed through a minimal monthly subscription, “each member contributes about US$2 a month just to ensure that we do the basics that are essential for us to keep the organization running.”
Mguni said they are apolitical and work with whoever is the current Member of Parliament (MP) or councillor.
“So far we have really been fortunate to have MPs who are active in supporting us.”
“Our concern is that every single Wednesday, refuse trucks come but we see regularly that there are households that don’t take out their refuse and then we see illegal dumps mounting, definitely nurturing that kind of change of attitude and approach in waste management in the area is one of our key areas,” she said.
Mguni said the executive committee identifies clean-up campaigns and potential partners to work with.
“We also solicit for donations and most of our donations that we have received so far are in kind and very little cash has come through so far and we meticulously account for everything that has come through. Our community members are invited to WhatsApp forums inviting them to participate in cleaning activities,” she said.
She added that the task force has also devised a reporting system to inform their partners on the cleanup campaigns that they hold in the community.
“We give feedback to our stakeholders primarily to EMA as well as the City Council, if we have a cleanup activity we report back to them so that they are aware of what we are doing,” said Mguni.
“We have also created relationships with the recycling companies as well, we noticed that there was a lot of plastics in the waste that was being collected, so we decided to incorporate plastic recycling.”
