In Madagascar, bins and dumpsters are overflowing in many areas of the capital. While nearly 1,000 tons of waste are generated every day in Antananarivo, the Municipal Sanitation Company (SMA) only manages to collect 550 tons. The situation is becoming critical around the markets where plant waste is even more numerous during this lychee and mango season.
From our correspondent in Antananarivo,
In front of the Anosibe market, one of the largest in the capital, mounds of garbage have invaded the street and taken the place of some fruit and vegetable merchants. The customers of Sahondra, 50, are fewer and fewer: “ You see there, we are installed on the garbage. Look at all the flies on my merchandise. We are in complete dirt. No one wants to come buy here. »
Weaving their way between the stalls with their wheelbarrows, the cleaning agents continue to dump leftover food, branches, leaves and fruit peels at the feet of the merchants. “ It’s the waste from the indoor market that we bring here. We are only doing our job, but what we are asking for is that there are dump trucks coming to remove them because there is too much. Everyone is in trouble here “explains one of them.
Of the trucks, the Antananarivo sanitation company responsible for collecting garbage only has 20 of them, whereas at least 30 are needed, indicates its general manager, Colonel Jaona Ravoavy Andrianaivo. A situation which also arouses the anger of the inhabitants of the district, says Nehemia, a fly swatter in the hand: “ We live with garbage all day. In the morning, the smell makes us nauseous. We are asked to respect sanitary measures, but they do not pick up garbage which can cause illness. Look, they even block traffic and it creates traffic jams. »
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Not enough money to fund pickup
“ The means do not follow the rhythm of waste generation. We finance our activities with royalties on household waste collected by the municipality, with taxes on land and built property. But with the contexts of Covid-19, these taxes have not been collected for two years. So there, we have exhausted everything, informs the general manager of the Sanitation Company of Antananarivo.
” Normally, in this period of rain and fruit, we increase the number of bins a little, but we cannot do it at the moment “, he continues. SMA intends to work with merchants who have carts around the markets to transport the garbage to an appropriate site.
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