ISTEP partners resolve to improve Waste Management, Occupational Health and Safety in their Institutions

A one and half-day Environmental Sustainability and Occupational Health and Safety workshop involving participants from vocational and technical training institutions has ended today, 22nd February, 2017 at the VETA Hotel and Tourism Training Institute (VHTTI) in Arusha with participants resolving to devise strategies and mechanisms for enhancing waste management and occupational health and safety in their institutions.

The workshop involved some 50 participants drawn from implementing partners of the Improving Skills Training for Employment Program (ISTEP) of the Colleges and Institutes Canada (CICan) including from different centres of the Vocational Education and Training Authority (VETA), the National Council for Technical Education (NACTE), Arusha Technical College, the National College of Tourism (NCT), the Dar es Salaam Institute of Technology (DIT) and the Mineral Resources Institute.

During the whole day of the 21st February, participants shared and discussed in lengthy about the current practices in regard to waste management in their institutions and compared to the ideal or recommended practices.

During the workshop, consultants from the NAK Consultancy, Ms Pamela Mutabazi and Edgar Samwel shared the recommended practices in regard to management of waste materials of different categories including reducing, reusing, recycling as well as disposal of hazardous wastes.

An initial stage in the waste management process, which was found to be not a common practice in most of the institutions is the separation of different types of wastes in different collection bins, before further decisions on the mechanism for disposal or management.

Some of the means as shared by consultants include making of manure from food leftovers, recycling of plastic bottles and refining and reuse of waste water.

However, although most of the institutions mentioned that they were producing a lot of waste oil from different vehicles and machineries in the training workshops, their disposal mechanism was a challenge especially after it was revealed that such a waste is categorized as hazardous, thus done by some vendors with special skills and certified by the National Environmental Management Council (NEMC).

For the case of Occupational Health and Safety (OHS), although most of the institutions indicated that they had some arrangements and measures for dealing with Occupational Health and Safety issues, it was established that most of them lack formalized policies and systems for proper management and coordination of OHS issues.

Participants resolved to take actions, particularly in regard to developing policies and systems for proper management and coordination of OHS in their institutions.

The Environmental Sustainability and OHS workshop is immediately followed by Marketing workshop involving the same participants, from the afternoon of 22nd to 23rd February, 2017.