Municipalities to track garbage collection via phones

DAILY NEWS Reporter

MUNICIPALITIES and councils can now monitor garbage collection exercise by tracking vehicle movements and amount of load carried through mobile phones.

The system, developed by Perfect Infotech International (PII), enables to receive truck and cleaning information on daily, weekly, monthly basis per street either via mobile phones or internet.

PII Director of Business Development, Ebenezer Msuya, said local government chairmen could follow the vehicles using fleet management system whenever trucks enter or leave their respective streets.

“The chairmen have timetable for garbage collection and how many times trucks are required to pass each street per week. This way a chairman know that street .

A has little or no garbage to collect therefore direct a truck to Street C instead… thus maximise equipment utilization,” Mr Msuya said yesterday.

The same system besides trucking the vehicle daily movement, can also issue report that shows the daily routine of cleaning a certain ward as per municipal or council officer specifications.

Mr Msuya said the entire system is connected via mobile telephone and the chairmen easily receive the messages once the trucks are coming in and out of their respective streets.

“A chairman can decide at what moment to receive a report at his/her convenient time, and inspect if the truck has load to the maximum,” Mr Msuya said.

The current procedure, in Dar es Salaam, trucks are supposed to collect garbage three or four times per street per week, but in most cases are passing once or not at all.

This, according to city fathers, makes difficult for them to verify the collection exercise as there was no effective tool to manage the trucks.

Mr Msuya said the cost of running the trucking system device is affordable since the said system will limit unnecessary movement thus saving on fuel.

Dar es Salaam city was estimated to generate some 4,300 tonnes of waste daily, of which only 30 per cent reached Pugu Kinyamwezi Dumpsite.

The remaining 70 per cent was either disposed of informally or illegally dumped into waterways, fields, or burned causing a variety of health, economic and social related consequences.

In 2010 and 2013, Dar es Salaam was rated the eighth and twelfth filthiest city in the world by NYC Consulting and Forbes respectively