By JOACHIM BUWEMBO

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Christians believe that God so loved the world that He gave his only Son that whoever believeth in him shall not perish... That was over 2,000 years ago. But the Almighty seems to also use steam and ice methods; this time instead of sending a beloved child, He has loved Uganda so much that he has sent us our own garbage to shake us from slumber so we start or resume thinking.

It was a week ago on the morning of Saturday, August 10, when He let the garbage mountain of Kiteezi, a mere 10 or so kilometres from Kampala city centre, crumble and bury dozens of people to death.

For 10 years, the landfill of Kiteezi has been operating illegitimately because its designated life of 15 years ended in 2015 and indeed, a technical inspection team decided that it must be immediately decommissioned.

In addition to a technical report issued, legislators recommended the same, and the Kampala Capital City Authority (KCCA) proceeded to acquire another hundred plus acres further away, where garbage would not just be dumped but processed to generate electricity.

Making electricity from garbage is not very profitable in commercial terms but in these days of environmental consciousness and climate change, it is a very smart thing to do. Addis Ababa is already doing it and a quarter of the Ethiopian capital’s households depend on such a plant for their electricity.

Read: BUWEMBO: Kenya could still push Africa economic integration

From a documentary that has been circulating since the Kiteezi disaster, the Addis plant receives 2,000 tonnes of garbage daily and burns two-thirds of it to run turbines, releasing non-polluting steam. Only a third that wouldn’t burn safely is compacted in the landfill.

Kampala city generates 2,500 tonnes of garbage daily, half of which has for 10 years been illegitimately piling at Kiteezi – the other half being left “to whom it may concern”.

The 1,250 tonnes (daily) have been simply dumped, creating an unstable mountain, whose contents toxically leak into underground water sources.

You may ask why KCCA continued dumping where its own consultants had directed explicitly that it must not, 10 years ago.

The furious elected Mayor of Kampala Elias Lukwago, burning with (this time) righteous anger, says that a smaller site of about 70 acres was acquired for temporary landfill but, according to him, the land was stolen and shared out into plots by some KCCA officials and local leaders.

As for the bigger site, well, the mayor says several investors were interested but the government was offering to buy the electricity from the garbage processing plant at only $5 cents a megawatt for the national grid compared to 18 cents paid to the hydropower generators.

So, they lost interest. And so on and so forth.

When the mountain fell on houses and rescue efforts started last Saturday, some of the wealthy city people had started blaming the victims for settling near the dump. But as information started coming out about the criminal negligence by different officials who allowed the dumping to continue for a decade against documented warning to the contrary, the blame game shifted.

By that Saturday afternoon, some souls buried under the garbage still had some life and were communicating on phone, begging to get unburied. Meanwhile operators of the earthmovers reportedly got tired and took a break, apparently the machines also needed a rest so no relief operators took over. By the time excavation resumed, the calls had stopped and it was a search for bodies, not people to rescue.

There is neither space nor need to state what God wants us to do after waking us up with death of our poor people buried under garbage generated by the well-off – the poor have no garbage to generate.

It is obvious and our urgent to do things include learning to sort garbage at household level to make its management easier, taking technical reports seriously at institutional level, and stopping theft of institutional land at all levels.

Buwembo is a Kampala-based journalist. E-mail:[email protected]