Matuail landfill is in utter disarray
Residents from areas near the Matuail landfill have been suffering from its awful stench for nearly five to six years due to lack of waste management capacity at the site. The landfill's capacity was exceeded last year, and more than a quarter of the site has been unusable since February this year due to a high-voltage pylon collapsing onto that part of the site. As a result, landfill authorities are dumping waste into a nearby lake and other waterbodies.
Due to this lack of dumping space as well as a severe shortage of equipment and manpower, the landfill area has become an open-air crude dumpsite. Poor leachate management, lack of daily covering of the garbage with soil and greenhouse gas emissions have also made it extremely unsanitary. Leachate, a toxic by-product generated from compacted high-moisture content waste, has leaked all over the site, as the leachate collection drains are either full to the brim or completely choked by solid waste. In some places, the solid waste layer is nearly 70 feet high, which means there should be at least three layers of leachate drains; instead, there is only one layer of leachate drain.
Officials concerned say they have only around 40 percent of the heavy equipment they need to process the daily 2,500 tonnes of waste. And even the available equipment is damaged frequently as they have to operate on uncovered waste, in contact with overflowing leachate. Lack of manpower is another major issue, in addition to the complete absence of recycling facilities. Overall, the terrible condition of Dhaka's biggest garbage dump depicts a woeful picture—one that illustrates criminal mismanagement and extreme apathy on the part of the authorities who have let things get to this point.
The way things are handled at this landfill is in no way sanitary. It is making the nearby region unliveable and is completely unsustainable in the long run. However, it is perhaps a part of a bigger problem: failure of the authorities to create a sustainable and sanitary waste management system. And in order to solve that, there has to be a complete overhaul of our waste management system. In that regard, the authorities need to quickly approve and implement the Clean Dhaka Master Plan 2018-2032. Moreover, hiring the necessary manpower and equipment to handle all the waste that is being dumped, as well as creating recycling facilities, is the need of the hour.
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