As part of efforts to achieve a more sustainable eco-friendly city, the Association of Scrap and waste Pickers of Lagos (ASWOL) has launched a website to verify and integrate waste pickers, cart pushers, and recyclers operating in the informal sector of the state economy into the waste management system of the state.
Speaking at the unveiling of the website in Lagos, the President of ASWOL, Mr. Friday Oku, said the website is designed to unify, strengthen, expand and formalize operations of waste pickers while also ensuring fair wages and standard practices for the achievement of sustainable waste management.
He said, “The Lagos state government is ensuring that the informal waste pickers are involved in the recycling system value change.
”Until now, the waste pickers are not organised in Lagos state but the truth is, they are the more important people if we want a cleaner environment.
”The website is to create awareness on the activities of ASWOL and make society a part of it. It is to let them know the real waste pickers on the streets of Lagos. We are hosting all the waste pickers on the site with the aim of identifying their locations of operation and by extension, solving insecurity challenges allegedly occasioned by it.
”We have had training for waste pickers and cart pushers in Lagos to introduce them to the workings of the website. The Lagos state government has introduced Pakam App for waste management and recycling, therefore we are training the waste pickers to be able to key into this new technology.
”So far, there are up to 1000 waste pickers on the website and this is because we don’t just register any waste picker. We do a background check using the NIN before we register any waste picker on the site.”
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Oku appealed to Lagos residents, “We are appealing to all citizens in Lagos state to separate their waste from source. They can make money from their waste and pay the PSP operators on the other organic wastes. Other wastes like plastics, metals, and papers should be kept aside and money could be made from them. To join, a waste picker only needs to click on the website: www.aswol.org and input all the necessary information. The registration is free.”
Also speaking at the unveiling ceremony, Co-founder, Rethinking Cities, Deji Akinpelu, said ASWOL in conjunction with the Rethinking Cities and Heinrich Böll Stiftung launched the website to help government and the public to verify members who work in Lagos.
He stated that rather than ban the operations of informal waste pickers, the Lagos State government can rather semi-formalize its operations through the ASWOL and the use of technology to deploy and track their services.
According to him, in spite of the huge contributions of waste and scrap pickers in waste collection and separation in Lagos State, waste pickers have faced untold harassment, discrimination, arrests, and detention while working informally.
He said, “The unveiling of aswol.org is one of the steps in integrating informal waste pickers in the waste management sector in Lagos, which Rethinking Cities has strongly advocated in Lagos over the years. We don’t need to ban operations of informal waste pickers, we can rather semi-formalize them through forming of associations and the use of technology to deploy and track their services.
”The state with a population of over 20 million, according to a recent statement, requires an integrated waste management system where the informal sector with over 5000 waste pickers/collectors, cart pushers, and recyclers, is carried along in achieving a more sustainable and eco-friendly city through a waste management system that embraces the informal sector and sees the players as an integral component of the system.
”Aswol.org is a platform through which the public can verify a registered waste picker. The website is a user-friendly website for members of the public to interact and verify the authenticity of any waste picker operating in Lagos.
”With the unveiling of the website, we have taken a bold step towards semi-formalising the activities of waste pickers who constitute an essential component in the waste management ecosystem in Lagos.
The website will serve as a resource centre for any information relating to waste and scrap dealers in the state thereby strengthening the waste and scrap dealers’ networks at the international, regional, national, and local levels.
Our goal remains one thing – to organise the waste and scrap pickers to be an integral part of the waste economy of Lagos, a multi-billion naira industry, and to get the Lagos policymakers to recognise the role that the informal waste collectors play in the entire waste collection ecosystem.
This is why Rethinking Cities and Heinrich Böll Stiftung see this step as a laudable initiative in our efforts and engagement to end discrimination against informal waste pickers. The verification website practically shows the state government how to address some of the challenges it has always attributed to the waste pickers and how to integrate the informal waste pickers as mentioned in the Lagos state plastic policy.”