We impounded contractors’ trucks for violating new waste management guidelines — Consultant

The Oyo State Waste Management Consultant, Mottainai Recycling Ltd., says it has impounded trucks of some waste operators that failed to comply with the guidelines governing the new waste management architecture in the state.

Its Managing Director, Mr Adegoroye Adewuyi, made this clarification while responding to some contractors complaints’ on impoundment of their trucks by the waste management.

Adewuyi described their reactions “as clearly a case of corruption fighting back at every effort made to sanitise the system.”

Some contractors had alleged that impoundment of their trucks by the waste management was counterproductive.

Adewuyi said that the core of Mottainai’s responsibilities, as approved by Gov. Seyi Makinde, was to ensure that the mandate of a cleaner state was achieved.

According to him, “Our mandate, as the waste consultant, is to come up with policies and administer an effective and efficient waste management process across the state.”

Adewuyi said, “As a private entity, we operate a merit and capacity-based system across board and more particularly, as it relates to waste operators in the state.

“We cannot run a Private Sector Participation (PSP) model due to the nature of our contract with the state government, hence, the introduction of a franchisee model.

“It has set guidelines that would govern both Mottainai and its franchisees for an effective and transparent waste management system.

“It’s a two-pronged approach; we could either engage in direct collection of waste from source or engage the services of the existing waste collectors or bring on board, seek out new investors/participants in the sector.

“A major criterion that qualifies a waste collector to work with us is evidence of capacity and not the fact one has operated as an operator for several years.

“The level of customers’ satisfaction recorded, ownership of appropriate vehicles, compliance with existing guidelines, among others are some of the prerequisites of being an accredited operator under the Mottainai model.”

He said as part of the company’s measures to improve welfare and viability of the waste operators, it has come up with review and standardisation of appropriate waste tariffs, as well as the introduction of a sharing percentage of 60/40 per cent.

“The sole responsibility of the operators is to ensure that the customers are serviced regularly and dockets are issued as agreed,” the consultant said.

He said that the company, Mottainai, then took on the responsibility of managing invoicing, payment generation, split sharing amongst other responsibilities, which has brought about a positive effect to date.

Adewuyi, also said that the company had been covering up for the shortcomings of waste contractors, who have not been visiting allotted operational slots.

He explained that the impoundment of waste trucks, as alleged, was to alleviate the incidence of non-compliance and sabotage by the affected waste operators on the agreed standards set for the efficiency of the waste management sector.

Adewuyi said that many of them, who have been complaining, could not meet up with their obligations.

He said such impoundment, “is to make enforcement effective, while ensuring efficiency. It is not true that the company is engaging in witch-hunting or victimising anybody.”

According to him, “It is only in Ibadan that I have encountered a person who doesn’t own a truck and goes about borrowing or hiring trucks that would call him or herself a waste contractor.

“If you delve into the existing issues, we conducted a Waste Management Audit in order to understand the sector – its lapses and strengths and figure out ways to improve and protect the economy of the state.

“We do not believe in sacking people arbitrarily as we advocate for engaging with people based on their capabilities.

“The results of the audit conducted showed that a lot of operators falsified claims of truck ownership; indulged in indiscriminate disposal of waste, which also contributed to the unrelenting and indiscriminate nature of waste disposal in the state.

“Also, we introduced the use of waste compliance notes (also known as Dockets). These dockets are issued by the operators to customers as evidence of service rendered as it contains information like the number of waste bins collected, the date and time of service, the homeowner/customer signature.

“The dockets are then used by Mottainai as a basis for the issuance of an invoice to the customer for services rendered.

“So, our investigation revealed that some of them are now actually working with those trucks they brought in for recertification, so they lied their way in,” he said.

Adewuyi said the company also observed that a lot of the erring operators do not service customers regularly; they refused to issue dockets for service rendered and indulged in the collection of direct cash payments which is in flagrant disregard of the agreed standards.

“This results in complaints from customers which results in Mottainai taking on the duties of these operators in order to satisfy these customers.

“The way it works is that we are ensuring that all hands are on deck to ensure the effective management of the solid waste architecture, which in turn impacts on the environment under the Zero Waste, Zero Budget Initiative,” he said.