Sweeping streets: President Mutharika has put the horse before the cart

Proper waste disposal is of great importance to both rural and urban areas. Not doing so may endanger our lives in many ways and surely everybody knows this. Time and again, people are always being educated about the importance of waste disposal but then this process should not stop because every now and then, people forget.

Kids being kids and some adults being human even if they have learned the proper way of disposing the waste someday will still forget about it. Big thanks to by the First Couple State President Peter and Gertrude Mutharika and his second in command Saulosi Chilima who have made effort to spread the word and continue to be of service to other people. As a matter of fact, we can agree that it’s not that easy to volunteer to do such menial work because most of the times they are grappling with stress.

There are so many ways on how people can minimize the accumulation of waste for lesser job to be done in the future. One is through recycling. When you recycle at an earlier time, this will be very helpful. Aside from lessening the work load, money can be earned.

The only thing us the ordinary people can do in order to let the world know the importance of waste disposal is by teaching our own children. In this regard, we should be nurturing a child to do what is right while we are also saving the future generations.

Yes, we are still alive despite the pollution and waste but do we have something left for the children? If we aren’t thinking of the future just because we have no plans on bearing children, then it’s time to use our common sense. If we are too busy on your job, then we can always do some remedy for that. Take a little time off during our non-working days and start doing it with our family. But if it doesn’t work – the best way is by calling for refuse hauling handlers.

For some reason planting vegetative cover in our homes is fast becoming a hobby managed by the rich. Many a Malawi especially in the city of Lilongwe don’t think the dust would reduce if the city went on a campaign to have vegetative cover all around the city. Planting grass (Kapinga) can be a very good starter pack for each family. Another draconian measure is to pull down those Guantamo Bay brick fences to 1.2 metres and let hedges infest the city.

So everyone can see proper that waste and refuse disposal cannot be overemphasized. We need clean and health cities and towns to stave off disease and discomfort. The unprecedented example that the weekend set by the Mutharikas and Chilima is commendable. They have started with cleaning the city streets first. However, they have put the horse before a cart. Put succinctly, they have the things in the wrong order. They should, for example, have chosen two homes, one in the dustiest amorphous settlement of Mtsiriza and the dustier medium density settlement of say Gulliver where you have untarred residential roads and in the low density for example Area 47 sector 5. These places are just a stone-throw away from each other to relieve the tight newsroom budgets for media coverage.

In this similar vein, is high time our waste and refuse management programmes were resurrected. You can be assured that our refuse and waste control programme application will improve visibility as dust will have been minimised, reducing the chance of accidents, provide cleaner air, cleaner vehicles and offer our families a cleaner living environment.

Charity begins at home. The English pride themselves in the wisdom of this adage. And they seem to live up to its billing. We too Malawians can live to this billing. We should take care of families and people close to ourselves before we worry about helping others. We don’t think our streets should worry so much about the volunteers’ hands from the corridors of power when there are people already on payroll hired for that chore in our cities and towns.

If we really want to make the Malawi a better place, we should start by being clean in the homes first. Charity begins at home, they say. Cleanliness is not negotiable. Incidentally, ever heard of the maxim cleanliness is next to godliness?  It is very important to keep ourselves clean. When a child asks why a bath has to be taken regularly, mothers should reply religiously cleanliness is next to godliness. We shouldn’t be commuting scared by the imagination of one or two dirty passengers sitting next to us on the clean bus giving off malodorous smell.

Nonetheless, thank you, Mr President and company, for leading by example but you have put the horse before the cart. You could have kick-started the campaign better surely not from the city streets but people’s homes.

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