Dump needs K2m a year

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By JUNIOR UKAHA
THE Lae City Council requires about K2 million annually to maintain the city’s only rubbish dump at Second Seven, an official revealed yesterday.
Godfrey Worio, the health services manager whose division looks after the dump, said at the moment they were being allocated K500,000 annually to maintain the dump as well as their office.
He said that the amount was not sufficient and needed to be increased to have the dump maintained effectively.
Worio said funding was the reason why the council’s contractors were dumping rubbish near the main road because the access road into the dump in Lae was blocked by rubbish.
He said his office was aware of the matter but due to lack of funding they did not send machines to clear up the access road into the dump.
“The dump is okay but vehicles cannot access the site and dispose their wastes because the access is blocked off,” he said.
“The rain has made it impossible to drive inside the site.
“The contractors could not access the dump site, therefore, they are dumping rubbish near the road side.
“We have to fix the access road into the dump to allow the vehicles to go in.”
Worio said the situation was like that for about six weeks and not many months as claimed.
Worio said they usually engaged “dump maintenance contractors” to clear up the dump site once rubbish piles up.
But he said they had lately not done so because of funding issues.
“We don’t have a proper plan to clear the dump,” Worio said.
“We engage the dump maintenance contractors upon need basis only.”
Worio said the council did not have its own machines to clear up the dump, therefore, they were engaging private contractors.
He said they paid the contractors about K800 per hour for the job they did.
“There is supposed to be a dump maintenance schedule but because of our funding situation we cannot maintain the dump consistently.”
Worio said about 20 contractors engaged by the council were currently using the site to dump rubbish.
He said there were nine dump attendants at the dump site in Second Seven but they were sometimes not around because there were no permanent buildings to house them.
“A machine will be dispatched to the dump site as soon as some funding becomes available,” Worio said.
“We will have the place cleared up by this afternoon or tomorrow morning.”
The dump was built in the 1960s.