Pemba, a port municipality in the province of Cabo Dalgado in Mozambique, is soon to acquire a new fleet of vehicles to improve efficiency in the collection and transport of solid waste, and thus reduce pollution in its neighbourhoods. This is the result of $1 million in funding recently allocated to Pemba Town Hall by Japan, through the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).
According to the UN funding programme, solid waste management is unsatisfactory in Pemba. The situation is said to have deteriorated following the arrival in the municipality of internally displaced persons, who were forced to flee armed attacks by insurgent groups in Cabo Delgado. The head of the UNDP office, Samuel Akera, points out that this initiative is part of the UNDP’s Stabilisation and Immediate Recovery project, implemented in the province of Cabo Delgado, the scene of violent attacks between the Islamist group Al-Shabaab and the Mozambican armed forces since 2017.
Improving living conditions
Part of the budget granted by the Japanese government will be used to purchase backhoe loaders, container trucks, graders, tippers, trucks, motorbikes and other equipment to improve environmental sanitation in the town of Pemba by June 2025.
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An access road to the landfill and waste disposal cells will also be built thanks to the Japanese grant. “You can be sure that in five years’ time, we will no longer be (…) in situations of poor management of solid waste and access roads in our neighbourhoods in Pemba”, declared Satar Abdulgani, the mayor of the municipality of Pemba, very confident.
Inès Magoum