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Country's first CDM project on waste management now awaits an MOU with the Dhaka City Corporation (DCC). The project will turn municipal garbage of the city into power and natural fertiliser free of cost and bring home some $10 million as foreign direct investment, reports BSS.
"Our investment partner from Holland now awaits signing the memorandum of understanding (MOU) with DCC coming across all procedures and formalities," executive director of Waste Concern AH Mohammad Maqsood Sinha told a meeting of project stakeholders, including foreign development partners, at the BRAC Inn in the city.
He said that this project under the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) is expected to receive the final approval of the inter-ministerial CDM Committee and the high-powered National Board headed by the Prime Minister's principal secretary.
The Netherlands-based Worldwide Recycling is to provide the required 10 million dollars for the project with 'no burn' technology to be carried out in collaboration with the research and consulting agency, Waste Concern Bangladesh under the CDM.
The CDM mechanism, also described as carbon trading, derived from the 1992 Kyoto Protocol, under which the 29 signatory developed nations were obligated to pay for reduction of emission of greenhouse gases in developing countries.
Waste Concern officials said that, despite the completion of expert review of the project threadbare at different government levels, bureaucratic red-tape has apparently barred them from signing the MOU which was expected to be initialled four months ago.
"It's a win-win project in all considerations but we can't keep the investor waiting for an indefinite period. They will go elsewhere with their proposal," said discussion moderator Professor Mujibur Rahman of BUET.
The project, in line with the government's crucial poverty reduction strategy paper, is to create jobs for at least 1,000 poor people, mostly women. This will also remove the headache from DCC over waste disposal and disposal sites. It would rather earn for the corporation a certain amount of annual revenue and improve the city environment.
According to the project document, it would also produce 51,000 tonnes of organic fertiliser to uncertain soil quality being affected by chemicals, produce a maximum six mw power using the greenhouse methane gas emitted from garbage with no cost to be borne either by the government or Bangladeshi investors.
"DCC currently spends 2.1 million dollars annually only to dump wastes. If implemented, the project will save 31.6 million dollar of the corporation in the next 15 years," said Iftekher Enayetullah, director of the Waste Concern.
Prof Ejaj Hossain of BUET and Worldwide Recycling Chief Maarten Van Dijk, among others, spoke at the meeting also joined by experts and officials representing concerned government offices, academies, NGOs, foreign development partners and local residents of project site at Matuail.
Dhaka city currently produces 3,200 tonnes of municipal garbage of which DCC could only collect and dump 12000 tonnes every day in a crude manner, producing odour and polluting water bodies and air.
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