Private entrepreneurs have bright prospect in waste management business in the metropolis and other major cities. Investment in this field which still remains untapped can be a major source of earning.
An international conference held in Dhaka last week dwelt at length on promotion of public-private community partnership in managing wastes. Speaking at the conference, Md. Ziaul Haque, Deputy Director of the Department of Environment (DoE) said that about 4,000 tonnes of solid wastes await disposal by the Dhaka City Corporation (DCC) daily, according to a report published in The Financial Express. The DCC can only handle 40% of these wastes and the rest remains undisposed of.
Therefore, Mr. Haque observed that private entrepreneurs have great potential in this sector. The two-day international conference which ended on November 30 last was jointly organised by SR Asia, CIRDAP and Bangladesh Bank Training Academy. The Financial Express was the media partner of the conference.
Mr. Haque told the conference that in Dhaka and in other major cities, a number of waste management projects have been implemented under public and private initiative. There are many effective laws and regulatory measures in respect of waste management. But the laws are not strictly enforced. Muzaherul Huq, Chairman of Public Health Foundation of Bangladesh in his speech cautioned about the danger involved in mishandling of urban wastes.
This may lead to respiratory problems, cardio-vascular complications, cancer, kidney and neurological diseases. Mr Huq also pointed out that most of the solid, liquid and gas wastes in the city are harmful to public health.
In fact rapid growth of health facilities in and around Dhaka and other cities and towns across the country and the use of disposable clinical materials have generated large volume of medical wastes. Proper disposal of these clinical wastes produced by hospitals, clinics, pathology and diagnostic centresis non-existent. This results in spread of communicable diseases.
Clinical wastes not only affect people who come in direct contact with those but are harmful to the adjoining community and environment as a whole. Strict management of clinical wastes can only reduce the risk in the fast expanding mega city of Dhaka. Improper disposal of medical wastes, therefore, is a major cause of concern for the vast population and it needs to be addressed on an emergency basis.
A local daily in a photograph published in its issue of November 23 last showed how a young man, surrounded by heaps of clinical wastes, is engaged in sifting through discarded syringes and a variety of other hospital wastes. These were dumped outside the National Institute of Traumatology and Orthopaedics Rehabilitation, popularly known as the Pangu hospital at Syed Mahbub Murshed Avenue in Agargoan area.
Reckless dumping as well as sale of medical wastes continues unabated. Hundreds of children are engaged in recycling these wastes in factories in old part of the Dhaka city. The plastic used in the factories is mostly received from heaps of medical wastes collected by the street urchins from different government and private hospitals and clinics. The garbage hunters, mostly boys and girls, collect those used syringes, plastic blood bags, bottles and many other items.
A section of employees of different hospitals and clinics also sell those used materials to the plastic factories. Medical experts say serious diseases including Hepatitis B and C and AIDS can easily be transmitted if wastes collectors are injured while handling used needles, available in plenty in wastes found dumped in open places.
In recent times there has been a mushroom growth of private clinics and diagnostic centres in cities and towns, even in upazilas across the country. All such health facilities hardly follow any scientific wastes management method. The Dhaka City Corporation (DCC) authorities say that they have been trying to dispose of medical wastes for more than five years but the response from private clinics in this regard is very poor. Such authorities, however, are yet to maintain safe disposal of medical wastes from the government and private hospitals.
In many city areas, some employees of private and public hospitals and diagnostic centres are often found selling used needles, syringes, ampoules, blood bags and a good number of other materials. The discarded materials are washed in an unhygienic condition and sold to vendors.
We are constrained to say that the authorities concerned of those hospitals and clinics are very much aware of the dumping and sale of hazardous medical wastes originating from their establishments but they pay no attention to it. According to an estimate, there are some 1500 hospitals and private clinics operating in the Dhaka city alone. Out of these, less than one fourth hospitals and clinics maintain scientific waste management facility.
The hospitals, private clinics and diagnostic centres functioning in various parts of the country have no waste disposal system worth its name.
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