The Daily Star got the insight of the hard-pressed waste management scenario during a recent visit.
Established with Japanese assistance in 2006, the site was planned as a sanitary landfill. A very few things, however, were done according to the design. The leachate collection pond and treatment plant were non-functional till 2018, while the recycling plant still exists only on paper. There is no heavy equipment to give the daily soil covering.
As there is no manpower for waste segregation and recycling, the landfill authorities allow in hundreds of waste pickers, who collect recyclable materials from the dumped garbage.
These extremely poor people, many of whom are women and children, come from nearby villages and stay at the landfill from 8:00am to 6:00pm every day.