Dear Friends:
I am happy to share with you our latest news after over two years of hard work at the community and central levels:
1. We have begun a systematic and organized process of registering small household and commercial traditional collectors into formal companies. The General Authority for Investment – the unit for SME’s – has been an invaluable actor in this process.
2. We approached the governor of Cairo and met with him requesting the integration for those small companies into the formal tendering and procurement process of the city of Cairo particularly in areas where service is really bad.
3. The governor has issued a decree with some new directives: to the Cairo Cleansing and Beautification Authority directing them to contract our companies particularly in neighborhoods with a low density population; for waste segregation at source at the household level; to penalize porters (bawaabs) who throw household waste into street containers instead of giving the waste to contracted companies which have official contracts for specific neighborhoods. This is all new and the CCBA is still sorting itself out to put the decree into effect but we are getting more and more companies registered every day.
4. A Syndicate for the Traditional Collectors and Recyclers: we got approval to establish a syndicate for the garbage collectors and recyclers. It is called the “Syndicate for workers in the Cleansing and Beautification Sector. We deposited 5000 LE in a new bank account and this will allow the Ministry of Manpower and Labor to finalize the remaining documents for establishment.
We celebrated the event on Thursday January 19th. It brought recyclers and collectors from the six Zabbaleen neighborhoods, two major TV channels, one member of parliament, government officials as well as NGO partners from among the source segregation public awareness partners. Our recycling school choir performed and we spread information among participating collectors and recyclers on the formalization of recycling workshops and companies which is proceeding at a steady pace.
What a blessing this event has been! We will now continue to expand membership to 3000 members (the founding members are 300) so we have a lot of hard work ahead of us. The team truly worked hard to make this happen. But our patron saint Mar Mina was watching over us all along.
Best Wishes and do share with as many people as you feel need to know about this.
Facebook page: facebook/spiritofyouthassociation
All the best
Laila Iskandar
laila@cid.com.eg
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