In Chifunfu Village along the shores of Lake Victoria, life looks pretty busy.
People from all walks of life, mostly young men and women from the neighbouring nine hamlets, come in and out. They do all sorts of work: fishing, selling fish, making canoes and mending fishing nets, selling foodstuff, doing casual works, to mention but a few.
Amidst this business and high population, the village does not have even a single litter bin.
The rapidly rising population in the village produces massive waste, most of it plastics, left to litter around the village, putting people and the environment at risk.
Empty mineral water plastic bottles, polythene bags, plastic cups, and plates, mention it all, all are right there, left unattended. And most of them are blown by wind into Lake Victoria. Others are given a free lift by running water that takes them into the lake.
“Ever since I started making canoes 10 years ago, I have never seen an environment officer or health officer here educating us about how to manage plastic waste,” narrates Manyasa Lunemya, a fisherman at the village.
“In many parts of the shores of Lake Victoria, plastics are everywhere. They are just in the water. And it is this water we use for various domestic purposes,” laments Mr Lunemya, stressing that “we surely are in trouble.”
Like Mr Lunemya, Victory Kasuku, a veteran fisher at Vodacom fishing camp, says the situation is worrying.
“We have nowhere to dump waste,” he notes, challenging local authorities to do, “something.”
Denis Tilwosaho, is the chairman of the village government. He blames this on the shortage of health and sanitation workers.
He says his village has only one health officer who serves nine hamlets with 280 households and a total population of 18,000 people.
“Every neighbourhood was supposed to have a health officer or a health care provider, but we have only one health care provider for all the neighbourhoods,” says Mr Tilwosaho.
As a result of this, he laments that villagers now lack information about how to manage their plastic waste effectively. The village leader also blames the Sengerema District Council for failing to provide waste storage equipment to his village. “In 2017, I requested waste storage equipment from Sengerema District Council to handle three tonnes of waste in the area to reduce pollution but all in vain,” he says.
Likewise, the manager of the National Environmental Management Council (Nemc), Lake Victoria Region, Ms Redempta Samuel, says communities along the lake were the major contributors of plastic wastes that accumulate into the waters.
“Communities on the shores of the lake are unaware of the effects of dumping waste, so they have continued to dump waste that flow into rivers and Lake Victoria,” she says.
The fishing community is also blamed for using illegal fishing nets made out of plastic.
The plastic nylon monofilament fishing nets do not rot when discarded. Tanzania’s government banned them, but some fishermen still use them.
Nation Media Group