Managing waste has been a huge challenge in the Kanifing Municipality, the Gambia’s busiest region for many decades.
In the absence of an effective and consistent official trash collection system for many years, donkey cart owners took up the responsibility of collecting household garbage to the dump.
In light of this, The Point decided to engage some of the donkey cart owners working on the site to discuss the challenges that they face in their work.
Alieu Njie said they could continue paying duties the whole day. However, he notes: “But here anytime you come you must pay in order to go inside. Sometimes we pay three times a day.
And we have so many challenges inside too, because even our donkeys find it difficult to move within the dumpsite.”
According to Muhammed Boye, sometimes after collecting the garbage, “we have two or three hundred dalasis. Now after coming from the dumpsite, we would be asked to pay 50 or 75 dalasis. Working here is very difficult because the duties levied on us are very high and we all know that this job is not easy because we can have disease.”
