Hindawi Journal of Environmental and Public Health Volume 2020, Article ID 4754780, 10 pages https://doi.org/10.1155/2020/4754780 Research Article Corruption and Solid Waste Management in Mbarara Municipality, Uganda Pius Gumisiriza and Sylvester Kugonza School of Civil Service, Public Administration and Governance, Uganda Management Institute, P.O. Box 20131, Kampala, Uganda Correspondence should be addressed to Pius Gumisiriza; [email protected] Received 14 June 2019; Revised 9 November 2019; Accepted 23 January 2020; Published 29 June 2020 Academic Editor: Stefano Capolongo Copyright © 2020 Pius Gumisiriza and Sylvester Kugonza. +is is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Mbarara Municipality in Western Uganda has for many years struggled to manage municipal solid waste. Leaders in this municipality have mainly attributed this persistent problem to poor financing, failure to enforce existing solid waste management laws and regulations, limited community participation, deprived attitude by the public towards waste collection, and tendency of municipal dwellers to litter. No in-depth academic study in Mbarara Municipality has ever been done to expose and illustrate how corruption directly happens and influence solid waste management. +is study fills this knowledge gap by illustrating how corruption influences poor solid waste management in Mbarara Municipality. +e study finds that municipal technical officials, garbage truck drivers, their turn boys, garbage sorters, factory owners, and private land grabbers all involved in different forms of corruption have directly and indirectly turned solid waste collection and disposal into a very costly problem to the municipal council and the general public. +e article recommends that fighting corruption in all its forms without fear or favor, encouraging them to play their role particularly in sorting waste, adoption of smart technologies, and putting in place measures that attract private investors while protecting the public can help in the effective management of solid waste in Mbarara Municipality. 1. Introduction public and private provision of solid waste collection services in Kampala also revealed that city officials use solid waste as a Increased municipal solid waste production is a natural cash cow to milk public money for their own benefits. In consequence of urbanisation, economic, and population Mbarara municipality, angry residents have for years pro- growth [1]. Unlike cities/towns in developed countries which tested about corruption and sordid solid waste management have effective mechanism for managing municipal solid challenges [18–23]. However, no academic study has been waste, those in developing countries face huge challenges undertaken to understand the nature and magnitude of [2–6]. Indeed, in Uganda, municipal solid waste is very huge corruption embedded within the solid waste management challenge in almost all the cities/municipalities [7]. Most processes in this municipality a gap filled by this research studies and media reports in Uganda have attributed the article. problem to poor financing, failure to enforce existing waste management laws, political interferences, lack of community 2. Mbarara Municipality and Solid participation, poor attitude by the public towards waste Waste Problems collection, inadequate planning, and people’s tendency to throw garbage anywhere including environmentally sensitive Mbarara Municipality is located in Mbarara district, areas [8–13]. Studies/media in other parts of the world have southwestern Uganda, 266 kilometers from Kampala the also indicated that corruption can be a huge hindrance to capital city. It has been growing very fast in the last two effective management of municipal solid waste [14–16]. decades and is currently the biggest town in the western Katusiimeh et al. [17] in their study on the effectiveness of region. +e municipality has a total land area of about 51.47 2 Journal of Environmental and Public Health sq. kms and had a total population of 195,160 as of the 2014 250 national population census. It is made up of three divisions of Kakoba, Kamukuzi, and Nyamitanga [24]. In 2005, 200 Mbarara Municipality became one of the beneficiaries of a US$ 300,000 National Environmental Management 150 Authority–World Bank Solid Waste Composting Plant Project meant to convert organic waste into compost ma- 100 nure [25]. According to the terms of this project, all the municipal solid waste generated in Mbarara Municipality 50 was supposed to be dumped at the 114-acre Kenkombe land in Rwentondo Cell, Kakoba Ward. +is land owned by the 0 council is located approximately seven kilometers from Waste generated Waste generated Uncollected waste Mbarara town Center. +e Municipal Council was supposed in 2006 in 2018 in 2018 to provide the overall project implementation and man- Figure agement functions including placement of skips on specified 1: Waste generated and uncollected/collected. garbage collection points, mobilization of households, and community based and local nongovernmental organisations solid waste comes with serious consequences including to ensure effective waste sorting by its generators and proper environmental degradation (soil, surface, and ground water disposal into the skips. +e council was also mandated to pollution), respiratory problems, and human diseases, such contract commendable private companies to carry out waste as cholera and diarrhea, harms animals that consume waste collection and delivery to the solid waste composting plant at unknowingly, and affects the poor most [1, 30–33]. +is Rwentondo for processing and production, as well as article exposes the nature and influence of corruption marketing of the produced manure. For project sustain- embedded in the Mbarara municipality waste management ability purposes, communities were supposed to actively process with an overall aim of reducing corruption and participate in on-site sorting of waste, play a key role in properly managing solid waste in this town and others in monitoring house-to-house waste collection, and pay five Uganda. hundred shillings (500/�) per month for the service. +e market assessment and analysis conducted revealed that 3. Material and Methods there was already a market for the compost manure if it was reasonably priced [26]. 3.1. Data Sources. +is article is built on both secondary and Despite the above comprehensive plans, angry residents primary qualitative data obtained from various credible of Rwemigyina and Kenkombe villages that border this open sources. Secondary data was obtained from Mbarara Mu- garbage-dumping site started complaining about the nicipal Council reports (obtained with permission) and stinking garbage, aborted foetuses, and huge volumes of academic and newspaper articles as reflected in the refer- leachate that found its way in the nearby Rwentondo stream ences. Qualitative primary data was collected from 38 as early as 2006 and the problem continued [27, 28]. In 2005, purposively sampled key informants who in one way or the town was generating and collecting around 30 tons of another have been involved in or affected by solid waste solid waste per day [26]. By the end of 2018, the amount of management issues in Mbarara municipality, as detailed in solid waste generated had skyrocketed to over 200 tons per Table 1. day which is a very significant increase [9]. Many written reports have revealed that over 30% of the over 200 tons of waste generated in Mbarara Municipality per day remains 3.2. Data Collection Techniques. Corruption is a very uncollected, unprocessed, or dumped in inappropriate sensitive and complex practice which manifests in many places [19, 21, 22]. As illustrated by the graph below, it is ways in different environments [34, 35]. Many respon- observable that there have been very sharp increases in the dents that may be involved or know people involved in amount of waste generated. It is also clear that the amount of corruption may not easily or freely give accurate infor- solid waste that remains uncollected per day increased very mation on the problem. To overcome this challenge, the significantly in the last 10–13 years. In fact, it is double researchers used different techniques to collect accurate the amount of the solid waste that was generated in 2006 data. First, the questions posed to some respondents (Figure 1). particularly garbage truck drivers, turn boys, sorter, and +ese claims are exemplified by a lot of photographic farmers did not directly refer to their practices as corrupt. evidence taken by the researchers during data collection for +ey were mainly asked about how they sort garbage, this study and pictures taken by other reporters on the where they transport it, how much money is involved per problem as illustrated in Figure 2. ton, and how it is paid and shared. Similarly farmers were Angry residents of Mbarara have for years complained asked about where they buy the compostable garbage about environmental, sanitation, and health problems as a from, how they buy it, who they give the money, and how consequence of mismanaged municipal solid waste much is paid per skip. It was the researchers who compare [18–23, 29]. +eir complaints are indeed with merit as many this data with Mbarara municipality rules and procedures other studies have clearly documented that poorly managed to establish what practices constituted