VietNamNet Bridge – HCM City has been mobilizing all possible resources for domestic garbage treatment. People-founded garbage collection units now handle 70 percent of the domestic garbage in the city.

People-founded treatment units are understood as groups of individuals who collect garbage and bring to dumping grounds or garbage treatment factories.

People-founded garbage collectors not well organized

According to ENDA, an organization of acting for environment and development, 35 percent of people-founded units are local ones, which gather the people who once worked for environment companies in the city and their relatives. Meanwhile, the other 65 percent are immigrant workers.

Most of them have low education levels: 29.4 percent have not finished primary schools, 37 percent have primary education, 24.7 percent of them finished secondary school. Meanwhile, 56 percent of them live in rent rooms, which means that their accommodations are unstable, thus making it very difficult for the local authorities to control.

The city’s authorities have decided that garbage collectors have to use small vans or modern vehicles instead of 3-wheel or 4-wheel self-modified vehicles. However, the regulation has been ignored by the people-founded garbage collectors, who believe that the required vehicles do not fit their works and conditions. Meanwhile, it takes them too much money to maintain and run the modern vehicles.

Urban dwellers complained that people-founded garbage collection units should not be seen as a good solution for the urban garbage problem. The units do not collect garbage on schedule, while in some districts, garbage is taken away only once for every two or three days.

State-owned and non-state owned units scramble for garbage

A lot of “garbage rings” have been set up, each of which takes care for a certain area. This means that the heads of the groups of collectors have agreed with each other about the areas they work in. Therefore, it is very difficult for local authorities to manage the people-founded garbage collection force.

In some cases, the members of the same garbage rings and different rings fight each other to scramble for… garbage. In other cases, the garbage rings compete with the workers from the districts’ public-interest service companies.

The districts’ public-interest service companies try to scramble for garbage from people by offering lower collection fees than people-founded units.

The people-founded units have complained many times about this to the city’s authorities, but nothing has been changed. Therefore, they have to fight to claim back the garbage sources.

Also according to ENDA, 83.6 percent of officers in charge of managing people-founded garbage collection units are holding more than one office, and only 16.4 percent spend full time on the work. Meanwhile, the people-founded garbage collection units have regular changes in the personnel, thus making it more difficult to control the units’ works. 69 percent of ward authorities said they had meetings with garbage collectors every month.

ENDA believes that local authorities should only supervise and control the garbage collection by the people-founded units, while they should not sign contracts on garbage collection with the owners of the garbage sources. Meanwhile, in case of the disputes in the garbage areas, it is the ward people’s committee which needs to come forward and make final decisions.

NLD